[verelo]

Great time to see this here. This morning I, in Canada, reached out to a friend in Ukraine and asked "I might be over-reacting, but what do you wish you knew before the war started?"

His response was "You're not over reacting, you might be under-reacting, worst case you end up with some cool new toys. Best case, you're more prepared than anyone else."

So yeah, here we are. Good article to add to my research.

[wackget]

Well, don't leave us hanging. What did they say?

[verelo]

LOL sorry, here's the list:

Generator 5kw - you want something with a higher duty cycle than you need so it can run for extended periods

Diesel storage for back of a truck - 330 Gallon (nice to have, after a week or two supply lines got fixed)

Diesel - for said tank

Medical supplies - IFAK kit (NAR is a good vendor). Bleeding control & dexamethasone.

Solar power - 1-5kwh. We still get 10-15 hrs a day on the grid, but this would be ideal.

Batteries - minimum 5+kwh storage

Network cable - 300m+ to start. I'm shocked how many times I need a cable and cant get any.

Hand pumps or small electric pump for different fuels and water

Ice auger - gas, but electric ideally, large / long drill bit 2" works too if you have a drill and smaller pipes?

Take a first aid course - MARCH protocol

Iodine pills not important - way bigger issues if you're resorting to that.

Get a rifle - not good for military but useful against looters and other unarmed crazy people

Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs: <https://www.amazon.co.uk/100-30cm-Electric-Fireworks-Igniter...>

Edit: formatting

[throw0101c]

> Generator 5kw - you want something with a higher duty cycle than you need so it can run for extended periods

Note that fossil fuel can age out, even with stabilizer.

There are dual- and tri-fuel generators out there that can use natural/methane gas and/or propane. Consider propane as you can get pretty big bottles and it does not expire so can sit around for long periods of time.

[red-iron-pine]

yeah used to manage data centers, diesel breaks down after a while, petrol even faster.

you can put in additives to extend the life, and specialized storage can squeak even more out, but ultimately you can't plan on it being good past 12 months, maybe as low as 5-6 if conditions aren't great.

we ran / tested the generators weekly, both just to exercise them and confirm they're good, but also just to burn off old fuel.

[verelo]

Yeah gas / propane might make the most sense. I already have a big 3026L propane tank.

[dlcarrier]

If you have a solar panels, a battery, and generator, it would be good idea to figure out how to hook them all together. Using the generator near its full output, to charge the battery, will use far less fuel than idling it all day.

Even if things are bad enough for iodine pills, they are only really needed for children. Once you hit your mid teens, your thyroid is fully developed and not pulling in enough iodine to worry about radioactive isotopes.

[mynameisash]

I assume the iodine is about water treatment and not radiation?

[throw0101c]

> I assume the iodine is about water treatment and not radiation?

If you live with-in 50 km of a nuclear power plant (e.g., southern Ontario), you are entitled to free iodine pills:

* https://www.preparetobesafe.ca

* https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/educational-resour...

* https://www.torontocentralhealthline.ca/displayservice.aspx?...

* https://www.durham.ca/en/news/ki-tablets-available-for-all-a...

[dlcarrier]

I presume that radiation is why the Ukrainian brought it up.

The article did mention using it for treating water, but it's not very good at that, and it tastes awful. Reverse osmosis works much, much better and it doesn't need to be a large permanently installed system; portable gravity-fed versions readily available.

[verelo]

It was a remark about nukes. Fortunately the place id go to is on a fresh water lake and we already have Water filtration setup.

[red-iron-pine]

presumably both

[bigfatkitten]

> Get a rifle - not good for military but useful against looters and other unarmed crazy people

If you’re going to do that, become proficient with said rifle.

[abc123abc123]

Or get a shotgun. For self defense, it is just point and click. Anyone can use them after a few minutes instruction.

[tosapple]

I was thinking the other day that ALL drones SHOULD be considered LIVE explosives. It's probably never a good idea to handle one if you're not trained.

[verelo]

Last march i was at SxSw and the police drones over head were a first for me. I was in this large crowd of people, and thought "yeah i dont like this". How do i know they're not just some bad actors drone with red and blue lights?

I think my exposure to casual discussions of how to arm drones with my Ukrainian friend, and the videos we've all seen on Reddit about drones in Ukraine, have really made their presence feel unwelcome.

[tosapple]

I think in the US legally they have to have a beacon while flying now, but my thought the other day was about them being parked/down.

[dghlsakjg]

It depends on a number of factors about legality, but the hardware to make a drone that doesn't have software forcing it to follow the law is cheap and plentiful. Its not particularly hard to get either, even with the drone ban.

For ~$200 you can build a very good FPV drone that can carry a dangerous payload and travel at highway speeds. Another ~$200 buys you the video receiver and a controller.

Drone warfare is terrifying.

[romperstomper]

I'd add some reasonable water supplies, at least bottled, and some pills to disinfect water from rivers, springs etc could be handy as well.

[cryptoegorophy]

is the last point correct? "Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs:" seems off for this list, like way off and more on military/offence side of type of thing?

and why would you need a 300m+ ethernet cable in a disaster?

[snypher]

Depending on the scale of the disaster you may not want your Starlink on your bedroom roof.

[verelo]

Totally valid use case for sure, and we discussed this because I do have a Starlink dish, but honestly, in a conflict with the US...I don't think a) I'd want to use starlink and b) i'd expect it to work.

[M95D]

Ethernet cable is a high quality cable usable for various other purposes. That includes low voltage power line, such as 12V from the car to phone charger in the house, solar panel wiring, basic tripwire alarms, command relays in the yard from the house, basic audio intercom with your neighbors when phone lines are down, etc.

Plus the obvious ethernet repairs: lines broken by fallen trees/branches in a storm, video camera cables cut by thieves, install new survillance cameras, move existing ones.

Self-supporting ethernet cable is also a decent clothesline when your dryer is not working.

[verelo]

In his case i didn't actually bother asking about the cat6 because i already had a huge reel in my garage, but I can think of cases such a remotely mounting satellite dish' and maybe connecting buildings to each other.

The molotov didn't seem out of range for me honestly. Firstly because I know he was one of the first people flying drones for defence, and now they've been mass producing their own for a few years. I have to admit, it seems pretty rational to want to fight back in any way possible.

[cryptoegorophy]

Smartest thing would've been - move out of Ukraine. Shit went sideways long before borders got closed. There were plenty of red flags.

[verelo]

Funny, not funny, this friend and I met up in early 2020 and had a beer down the road. He was telling me he'd rented his apartment in Liviv and was moving here next week. He had to go home to get some things, hand over the unit, and then he'd be back.

Next week was the pandemic, borders closed. He never left, and now he /still/ cant.

[Scrapemist]

They are proud people who want to defend their country.

[abc123abc123]

Let politicians fight and die in their own wars. If russia "visited" my country, I'd follow it with a drink in my hand from the bahamas. No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.

[throw0101c]

> No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.

If no one ever defends the dirt, the pieces of earth where you can enjoy a drink in peace and freedom will shrink over time as the aggressors will continue to gobble up land because of the lack of defending.

They keep moving forward, you keep moving back, until you have no where to retreat to.

[user205738]

Come back to this comment in a few years and think about whether something significant has changed for those people who did not sacrifice their lives for a meaningless battle.

People are more important than the state. If they are not ready to defend him, why should they be forced? You can offer money or other valuables in return, such as fame, a pension, or a position, but if a person doesn't want to, why should they do it?

[FitchApps]

Russia doesn't just "visit" your country. Lookup what Ruskiy Mir (Russian world) really means, basically your country gets subjugated by the Russians and I'm not talking about civilized or professional Russian forces - I'm talking about drunk and poor 20yo boys from a remote Russian villages that are now seeing the spoils of western civilization for the first time (do lookup what happened in Bucha, Kyiv suburbs in 2022 at the onset of invasion). Then of course the refusal of the Russians to recognize any other culture or language...the list goes on and on. So - yes, you could escape with a drink but then "If Not Me, Then Who"?

[red-iron-pine]

"I suggest bending over immediately and giving in to their demands" -- parent poster

and this isn't "just politicians", they're cleansing populations and relocating children

[dpc050505]

If politicians and the people who voted for them invade my country and hurt my family and friends I will be looking at revenge.

[benterix]

You have a very romantic view of Russian soldiers.

[Scrapemist]

You have to be be proud, yes.

[bill_joy_fanboy]

In this day an age, if you are a Western man defending a Western country's leading power structure, you are a fool.

The idea of being drafted to defend my country that sells me out at every opportunity is laughable.

[crystal_revenge]

The world we're headed for there is no "other place" to escape to. Many people's view of survival during collapse ultimately assumes the existence of a fairly large "safe haven" space for which they just need to survive until they get there.

[koonsolo]

That depends on a lot of personal things. I remember a Ukrainian I personally know, leaving after the 2014 invasion.

When Russia was doing "exercises" at their border in 2022, I asked them in a meeting what they felt (guys living in Lviv). Most of them thought Russia would have done it in 2014 already, and now it didn't make much sense. Only 1 person responded he filled up his gas tank. But in the end, nobody left Lviv right after the invasion.

[nidnogg]

Cool new toys! I like it. I've recently been thinking of branching into more water sports such as rowing, ocean swimming and the like to have a better shot at surviving out at sea. Hopefully I've gotten some mountains covered by now.