New National Geographic show: Doomsday Preppers

[TGO David]

I can't wait to see how they paint preparedness as being the domain of freaks, weirdos and fringe lunatics...

Doomsday Preppers - National Geographic Channel

Series premiers on Tuesday, February 7th at 8pm CST.

Doomsday Preppers explores the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it. Unique in their beliefs, motivations, and strategies, preppers will go to whatever lengths they can to make sure they are prepared for any of life’s uncertainties. And with our expert’s assessment, they will find out their chances of survival if their worst fears become a reality.

[BigJim]

Yep, Should be interesting

[mav]

I find it interesting you brought up this topic. I was either reading or watching something yesterday when I ran across the word "preppers." I had never heard of it before.

[Guest lostpass]

I can't wait to see how they paint preparedness as being the domain of freaks, weirdos and fringe lunatics...

Doomsday Preppers - National Geographic Channel

Series premiers on Tuesday, February 7th at 8pm CST.

Generally these shows only show the fringe of any movement. I suspect the preppers selected will look as ridiculous as they actually are. It is easy to go overbeard with this stuff. Watch the couponing show sometime. Wait, don't do that, the show is terrible.

It seems like what people really want to see is the "out there" folks. I suppose this is old news, freak shows have been around forever, pay a nickel and take a peep. When TV wants to show you average folks they'll spool your Facebook feed.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Regardless how silly it ultimately may turn out to be, prepping ought to be good for the economy from a keynsian perspective? Though if it results in severe mis-allocation of resources then it might not be so great from alternate economic perspectives?

I have never seen the couponing tv show nor do I wish to see it. Then again, maybe I should pay more attention.

The other week the lady in front of me at bilo checkout had about $300 of groceries and housewares, and I had about $300 of groceries and housewares.

It was obvious that the lady was a fan of the couponing show, as was the cashier and other women in line waiting to check out. I had never heard of the show and what happened next was bizzarre.

She whipped out a stack of coupons as thick as the bible. I got very impatient when it took 5 or 10 minutes while the cashier tallied hundreds of coupons.

But the bottom line is that the lady paid about $50 for $300 worth of merchandise, and I paid $300 for $300 of merchandise. Assuming she didn't spend a month of labor finding the coupons, it looks like she came out ahead. Assuming she really needed all that stuff that she bought for nearly free. The lady almost got a standing ovation from the cashier and other lady shoppers in the line when she proudly wheeled out her ill-gained booty.

[Guest lostpass]

Regardless how silly it ultimately may turn out to be, prepping ought to be good for the economy from a keynsian perspective? Though if it results in severe mis-allocation of resources then it might not be so great from alternate economic perspectives?

Hey, it's keysian so anything is possible!

I have never seen the couponing tv show nor do I wish to see it.

you are a wise man

Then again, maybe I should pay more attention.

I'd say your attention is the right place. Others would argue

The other week the lady in front of me at bilo checkout had about $300 of groceries and housewares, and I had about $300 of groceries and housewares.

It was obvious that the lady was a fan of the couponing show, as was the cashier and other women in line waiting to check out. I had never heard of the show and what happened next was bizzarre.

She whipped out a stack of coupons as thick as the bible. I got very impatient when it took 5 or 10 minutes while the cashier tallied hundreds of coupons.

But the bottom line is that the lady paid about $50 for $300 worth of merchandise, and I paid $300 for $300 of merchandise. Assuming she didn't spend a month of labor finding the coupons, it looks like she came out ahead. Assuming she really needed all that stuff that she bought for nearly free. The lady almost got a standing ovation from the cashier and other lady shoppers in the line when she proudly wheeled out her ill-gained booty.

Well, crap. You win. Have a free internet on me.

My wife loves you by the way.

[Guest NYCrulesU]

I'll watch it...simply because I enjoy watching different things.

I just recently heard the word or term "prepper". Don't really care for it.

I look at things this way....

I might wind up with a crapload of camping gear, food supplies, cases of water, toiletries, guns, ammo etc and nothing may ever happen and it was all for nothing. Well, I also carry a handgun for SD and may never be a victim of a violent crime.

My supplies are like my handgun. I would rather have them and not need them, then need them and not have them.

[Dolomite_supafly]

I plan on watching this. I think it will give us all good ideas. I try to be prepared but I know I am not completely there.

One thing I chuckled about is on the commercial one of them says "We have over 700 pounds of cucumbers". Now I like cucmbers but I do not belive I have eaten 700 pounds in my lifetime.

Dolomite

[Guest db99wj]

This ought to be interesting. 700lbs of cucumbers is fine, except for the shelf life issue, unless they have done something to them to preserve them.

Coupons, they save me a few bucks per week, but these coupon freaks are typically buying stuff they wouldn't typically buy if they were not couponing. Sam's has a deal that you can buy, its a discount program, you really can save some money, IF you buy what's on the list. I keep telling them, I buy one thing on that list, therefore, this is no deal for me.

[Guest NYCrulesU]

Ok..I have to ask...

I'm from Jersey. I'm used to the Star-Ledger on Sunday. It has a TON of coupons. So I go and buy the biggest paper I could find last Sunday (Chattanooga Times Free Press)...maybe a few coupons.

I'm in White County. What paper do I have to buy to get the bulk coupons? Where else can I get major amounts of coupons? My wife and I want (and need) to start saving a bit more of food shopping.

[Garufa]

Ok..I have to ask...

I'm from Jersey. I'm used to the Star-Ledger on Sunday. It has a TON of coupons. So I go and buy the biggest paper I could find last Sunday (Chattanooga Times Free Press)...maybe a few coupons.

I'm in White County. What paper do I have to buy to get the bulk coupons? Where else can I get major amounts of coupons? My wife and I want (and need) to start saving a bit more of food shopping.

If the groceries around here want you to save money you will be issued one of those ridiculous value cards.

[daddyo]

My wife has been a couponer for a couple of years now, but not to the extreme. She saves us somewhere in the vicinity of $40-$80 per week on our grocery bill of about $120. We have what I would consider a moderate stockpile of household goods and non-perishables. I also have a Coleman stove with extra propane canisters, as well as an extra propane tank for my grill.

Does that make us "preppers"?

[Hershmeister]

Hasn't this been shown already? I swear I've seen it before

[BrasilNuts]

Wouldn't you like to be a Prepper too?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Guess I qualify as a prepper but not hard-core. Then again some might consider it hard core.

Some preps are not especially "wasted" even if nothing happens. Fer example I HOPE that losing a job would be more probable than TEOTWAWKI, and a TEOTWAWKI food cache works just as good between jobs.

If TEOTWAWKI happens, it is not likely I'll run out of ammo. Unless it happens to be the kind of TEOTWAWKI where it becomes necessary to disburse firearms and ammo to any neighbors on the block who don't have their own. In that vanishingly improbable situation, would be slapping forehead that I was so unprepared.

[UncleJak]

People love freaks. That being said, I am pretty sure they will find the most "out there" individuals they can and show how overboard they are. Regular "preppers" would probably not make a very good show. I hate tv!

[JReedEsq]

Regular "preppers" would probably not make a very good show.

+1; how exciting is it to see a guy with a propane stove and a bunch of canned foods in his basement? My thoughts are how paranoid "prepping" is is directly correlated to what you're prepping for. I'd like to be more prepared for power outages, weather-related natural natural disasters... Even short-term civil unrest like Katrina or the L.A. riots makes sense. You know buying food you'll eventually eat anyway. Storing water you can eventually use when you go camping... That sort of thing makes perfect sense to me. MREs? No thanks...Storing thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo? That only makes sense to me if you shoot often and are preparing for ammo prices to go up.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Yeah I bought several things after last winter's bad tornado season. They might not get much use until there is a next bad tornado season, or a next blizzard, or TEOTWAWKI. Won't hurt my feelings if those items are never used, but it would have been nice to have em last winter.

I had a couple of dim long-run LED lights that worked great, but it would have been nice to have several more, for more rooms in the house. Me & wife got good use out of the headlamps for a few nights. Got four Energizer "Weather Ready" LED lanterns that either run bright or dim and use four D Cells. They will run several nights on bright, and much longer on dim. We put one each in kitchen, bathroom, livingroom and bedroom. We actually got use out of em already on a couple of short power outages.

Also the old generator is too heavy, on wheels out in the shop. We have nice-looking but rough riverstone paths leading from the shop to the back where the generator would be most useful. So we never got around to cranking it up because it was too much trouble. I can drag it around fine on asphalt and concrete, but need help on the riverstone paths, and wife isn't quite strong enough to help without risking injury.

So we got a small light Honda 2KW generator that can be stored in the basement, is very quiet, only takes a few minutes to carry out back and crank up. It is not a lot of power, but the Honda is convenient enough to set up even if you only expect power to be down for a few hours.

I had a few "small" UPS's which were useful until they ran down. Had built a big UPS years ago but the batteries had gone bad and it wasn't useful. It had been plugged in and should have been charged, but hadn't checked it lately and the batts had got to old to keep a charge. Pretty sure I had test-run it the previous year and it worked. Still need to replace the batts in the big UPS but am afraid maybe the batteries will get too old again before we need it next time. The sealed AGM deep cycle batteries are only good for about five years. Dunno if it is worth the money though it would be nice to have it working next time. If next time happens and I didn't repair the big UPS before then, will be kicking myself. Next time just doesn't happen very often in these parts. Which I'm not complaining about.

The basic plan I made many years ago was to have a big battery UPS and a generator. Run the generator a few hours per day to run the refrigerators and charge the UPS, then have modest power from the UPS for the rest of the day when the genny is off. But the plan broke down on two fronts, both the inconvenient old big-ass generator and bad batts in the UPS.

Need to figure out some kind of useful but inexpensive temporary small "doghouse" breathable shelter for the honda generator. Not a permanent building taking up space, but the shelter ought to be at least rugged enough not to blow away in medium-stiff wind. Carbon monoxide prevents running the genny indoors or near open windows but it is pretty likely that it may be raining or snowing when we need the genny.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[JAB]

I had a few "small" UPS's which were useful until they ran down. Had built a big UPS years ago but the batteries had gone bad and it wasn't useful. It had been plugged in and should have been charged, but hadn't checked it lately and the batts had got to old to keep a charge. Pretty sure I had test-run it the previous year and it worked. Still need to replace the batts in the big UPS but am afraid maybe the batteries will get too old again before we need it next time. The sealed AGM deep cycle batteries are only good for about five years. Dunno if it is worth the money though it would be nice to have it working next time.

Do you or does anyone else know of somewhere online I might find instructions for building a small backup power supply using two or three deep cycle batteries from the auto parts store? Like maybe marine or rv type deep cycle batteries? I am not looking to build a huge setup but where I live now the electricity is prone to go out if it rains. Of course I can survive without electricity for that long (we used to go days without power whenever it would snow, etc. when I was a kid) but it is annoying. I'd just like to have something that could run basic appliances, etc. for a few hours until electricity is restored. I know I would need a power inverter, etc. What I don't know is how to 'link' multiple batteries. I figure that if I could build a small setup with two or three linked batteries then later add a small 'suitcase' generator then I'd probably be able to have electricity to run the basics for a few days, at least. I'm also thinking that one of the rv style solar panel 'trickle chargers' (used to keep rv 'house batteries' charged up) should work for maintaining a charge between uses.

Edited January 24, 2012 by JAB

[Dolomite`s Breezy]

I think it would be interesting to see how they get ready for the zombie or whatnot apocalypse...I dont buy into all this dooms day crapp because I dont want to have to be afraid and scared for the rest of my life of what MIGHT happen..I am going to enjoy my life...

But we did do some prepping in case electro goes out and stuff..and we got plenty of rice stashed...

Some people go overboard for sure..

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Do you or does anyone else know of somewhere online I might find instructions for building a small backup power supply using two or three deep cycle batteries from the auto parts store? Like maybe marine or rv type deep cycle batteries? I am not looking to build a huge setup but where I live now the electricity is prone to go out if it rains. Of course I can survive without electricity for that long (we used to go days without power whenever it would snow, etc. when I was a kid) but it is annoying. I'd just like to have something that could run basic appliances, etc. for a few hours until electricity is restored. I know I would need a power inverter, etc. What I don't know is how to 'link' multiple batteries. I figure that if I could build a small setup with two or three linked batteries then later add a small 'suitcase' generator then I'd probably be able to have electricity to run the basics for a few days, at least. I'm also thinking that one of the rv style solar panel 'trickle chargers' (used to keep rv 'house batteries' charged up) should work for maintaining a charge between uses.

Hi JAB

Sometimes I think a good general-purpose backup would be having an RV parked in the driveway. Except in a situation if you get near-miss high winds that blow away the RV but leave the house standing. Which our area had had last winter. Old dad got too old to drive his RV and gave it to me, and we leave it parked at his house so if the power, heat or air conditioning goes out in their house, they can live in the RV. It seems almost a perfect turn-key solution, provided the RV doesn't get blown away.

Even if ya didn't plan on driving an RV very often-- Maybe used RV's sell pretty cheap now that gas is too expensive to go anywhere?

====

There are quite a few "near turn key" mid-size UPS. Well, smaller than a full-house solar battery system but lots bigger than a computer UPS.

The problem being that they are kinda expensive and of course anything with a bunch of big batteries is either gonna be un-moveable without disassembly, or "move with great effort and caution" on wheels. If you want some links to specific equipment lemme know.

RV or boat electrical equipment are good choices and there is similar equipment used in long-haul sleeper Semi trucks that would be suitable. It is all what I consider expensive. Maybe somebody else wouldn't consider it expensive.

The other branch of suitable equipment is stuff sold for home wind/solar. Just install exactly as you would for a small-to-medium size solar rig, but use a charger to top off the batteries rather than a solar array. Then if you get really rich and want to roof the house with solar panels, you already have half the system already installed. Of course that stuff is expensive too.

People who want the most bang for the buck in largish home solar will use big banks of relatively inexpensive flooded deep-cycle lead acid batteries. For instance an array of 6 volt golf cart batteries. But because they can vent hydrogen, you either need to build a very-well-vented-to-the-outside battery compartment in the basement, or build a separate battery shack in the back yard. I would never put a bank of non-sealed batteries in my basement. A backyard battery shack still needs decent ventilation, and if winter weather can get cold enough you might have to make arrangements to heat the battery shack some times of the year.

Some of the boat or RV deep cycle batteries are also non-sealed. The non-sealed deep cycle batts have the most reasonable prices. Its the same deal, you have to pay the same close attention to ventilation for residential use. Just like golf cart batts. A big bank of flooded RV or boat deep cycle batteries would work as good as golf cart batteries, though the last time I looked at it, you can get better power density for the money with golf cart batteries. Then the people who are really hard-core buy the kind of batteries that have to be delivered and installed using a fork lift.

For the smaller systems safe enough to keep in the basement without special ventilation, usually boat or car-battery-size sealed lead acid deep cycle, either gelcell or AGM. If you google you can probably find a document explaining the vairous pros and cons about gelcell vs AGM. I used the AGM and they worked fine until they got too old. The ones I had were four Guardian 110 AH AGM batteries, a model which was marketed for police and emergency vehicles and also small home power systems. The sealed ones cost more. Somebody would have to be a rich man to make a huge basement battery bank with sealed lead acid batteries. Dunno, but there MAY be some models of sealed vehicle batteries that are starter batteries rather than deep cycle, which wouldn't be desirable for a UPS.

Northern Tools sells one or two brands of chinese sealed batts that are a little cheaper. Not much cheaper. Northern Tools markets them for solar/wind use. Dunno if you get what you pay for in batteries. All the sealed batts are expensive enough that if I bring my old UPS back from the dead I'll be looking for good batteries and not the lowest price. But maybe the slightly-cheaper chinese batts are fine. Heck, maybe all the brands come from the same chinese factory nowadays.

You can buy equipment primarily for 12, 24, and 36 volt systems. My UPS was 12 volt. Ferinstance if you want a 12 volt system using 6 volt golf cart batts, each pair of batts would be wired in series for 12 volts, then however many pairs you have would all be wired in parallel.

Because you start talking about a bunch of current if something goes wrong, if banks get real big you make several sub-banks, each sub-bank having its own circuit interruptor and fuses. The different sub-banks are sometimes connected together using battery isolators, so that a fault on one bank won't propogate to the other banks and make a bad situation even worse. Some kinds of chargers or inverters have a battery-combiner feature built-in, so you can use multiple banks without adding separate battery isolators.

The best home-brew details might be in web pages devoted to solar power. Thats what I was studying years ago.

My system could work with all four 12 volt batteries in parallel, but my charger has a battery-combiner feature so I have two banks, with each bank containing two 12 volt batts in parallel. On a "small system" that size, its probably about the same whether you have 2 banks of 2, versus one parallal bank of 4. You don't mix battery age or battery brands on a bank. All the batts you wire in parallel in a bank need to be the same age and brand. Ideally brand new when you put em in service of course.

====

If you are setting up for "one shot" short outages, you can get by with a less expensive charger, I suppose. You want a charger at least smart enough not to damage the batteries, and it ought to have a switch on it so you can tell it you are using sealed batteries, which get a slightly different charging profile compared to flooded batteries.

If you don't expect to be recharging daily off a generator in a long outage, if you just want to have power for a day of interruption, then a 5 or 10 amp smart charger would be fine. It might take a day or three to fully charge your 4 battery bank, but it would eventually get the job done. Then if TVA drops the ball for a day, next day when the power comes back on you can take a day or three to get back to full charge.

But if the idea is that you want to recharge off a generator so the generator doesn't have to run 24/7, you need a charger that can bring up the batteries much faster. And of course your genny needs to deliver enough current to make your charger happy. Maybe a relatively inexpensive high-current non-smart automotive shop charger would work fine, but I'm askeered to try that.

Company names keep changing. The charger I got years ago is a pretty nice 40 amp three-stage Statpower smart charger. It is nominally a canadian company but more and more stuff gets built in china. But it still seems decent gear. AFAIK the current name has changed to XANTREX though maybe they've changed it again. Some nice XANTREX products still seem to be made that are exactly the same item, but XANTREX quit selling them and other brandnames are on them. Northern Tools has a "house brand" with a few items that are identical to discontiued XANTREX product. USA/Canada designed, chinese made. Probably about as good as it gets in something an ordinary feller can afford, though it isn't what I consider cheap. XANTREX still makes chargers similar to mine. They sell em targeted for boat/RV/home use.

I wanted my system only big enough to run a laptop and a few accessories, for a day or so. So I saved money by only getting an 800 watt XANTREX modified sine wave inverter. If you have the money for true sine wave then that's great, and for some things you really do want true sine wave, but modified sine wave works good enough for what I wanted.

=====

One more wrinkle and I'll let it die-- I bought the separate charger and inverter to save money, and I wanted a fairly heavy charger and didn't need a very strong inverter. But several companies including Xantrex and Tripplite make combination inverter/chargers with auto-switching. In that class of device the auto-switching is not fast enough to keep a computer from crashing when TVA goes down, but it is fast enough that you don't notice on anything else.

An inverter-charger is a whole lot more convenient than what I built. My beefs with them is that they are kinda pricey, and they tend to make the inverter a little stronger than I personally need, and the charger a little weaker than I would want. So if you want a really strong charger in an inverter charger you have to pay a lot of money and you end up with a real strong inverter. There's nothing wrong with the real strong inverter if you've got the money, but if you actually hook up enough stuff to draw what the big inverter can deliver, your four battery bank ain't gonna last anywhere near all day.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[JAB]

Lester Weevils, thanks for the additional info. I actually have a small camping trailer parked outside. The problem is that it only has one battery and even running the interior lights for a few hours drains it to the point that the low battery alarm starts beeping. When using it for camping, unless it is parked somewhere with an electrical hook-up, it gets treated more or less like a solid-walled tent - just a place to sleep - than like a more steadily-powered RV might. My (soon to be ex) wife uses a CPAP and we always took a spare deep-cycle battery with an inverter (sat the battery outside and ran an extension cord in the window) to run it when we camped in places that didn't have hookups.

Mostly what I am looking for would be a low-tech (and cheap) setup that would allow me to power, say, a lamp and small things like a toaster oven or a hot plate during a short-term power outage. Maybe something that could power a TV or radio at the most. I don't need something that would be constantly hooked up to keep a computer from going down so I am not really concerned with it being an uninterrupted power supply nor would I be looking to run a whole lot off of the batteries. I do have camping equipment that could be used for cooking, etc. outdoors but the problem is that usually our power goes out because it is storming - not ideal conditions for grilling a hamburger outside. My thought would be just to have available power that I could tap by using a 'redneck' setup of plugging a good, multi-outlet extension cord into the inverter then running it into the house when needed. As such, the unsealed batteries should be fine as ventilation isn't an issue nor is mobility of the setup a concern. Truthfully, for my purposes, just having two or three deep cycle batteries on hand and hooking the inverter to them individually (sort of like we did with the CPAP) and rotating to the next as each one goes dead would probably serve my needs. My biggest reason for wanting to link two or three would be so I could keep them all charged without having to rotate the charger to each battery and so I could utilize them without having to go outside (in the pouring rain, thunderstorm or whatever) every couple of hours to swap the inverter around. I'm just not sure what is the best way to link the batteries.

I know that some guys who like to build serious off-road vehicles sometimes link a couple of deep cycle batteries (mounted outside their vehicles) and then wire them up so that the vehicle's alternator (actually they sometimes install a second alternator) will keep them charged. They do this so that they can run winches, offroad lights and the like without draining their cranking battery. That is more along the lines of what I am thinking of except using a battery charger or maybe even a solar charger (like the one linked below) to maintain the charge when the batteries aren't in use. Supposedly, solar chargers of the size linked below (unlike lower-powered trickle chargers) can actually recharge batteries but I don't know how long it would take and, of course, they probably wouldn't do a whole lot during a storm.

http://www.amazon.com/Sunforce-50032-Solar-Battery-Charger/dp/B0006JO0X8

Edited January 25, 2012 by JAB

[oldogy]

And with our expert’s assessment, they will find out their chances of survival if their worst fears become a reality.

Oh boy, their experts will evaluate. I am impressed. Credentials list?

oldogy

[Lumber_Jack]

There was a show on Spike or some similar channel about apocalypse preparing family. The built a truck that ran on wood fire, made their own black powder and cast bullets. It was kind of boring and anticlimactic, even with production hype. Hopefully this show will be more entertaining

[Hershmeister]

There was a show on Spike or some similar channel about apocalypse preparing family. The built a truck that ran on wood fire, made their own black powder and cast bullets. It was kind of boring and anticlimactic, even with production hype. Hopefully this show will be more entertaining

That was The Colony - Discovery channel I think

The second series was particularly good - set in a katrina trashed area of New Orleans. The tribe got screwed in the end - never could get their security taken care of - and paid for it every episode.