As it says in the title. What do yoy think is the most likely to happen SHTF situation in Europe right now? Is it something related to climate change, war, economic collapse or maybe the gradual loss of the little freedom we still have because our increasing tyrannical governments?

I personally think that an economic crisis is the most likely, due to how little politicians care about us and our countries, taking Europe to an abyss that is going to take a great effort to recover from.

Hello,

New here but getting started.

I'm looking for more stores in EU that offer bulk sales both with long and short expire dates (for different purposes) and that also ships.

Would be thankful for any good experiences but also if there are any that should be avoided.

Thanks!

We're currently in the process of deciding whether to trade our Dodge Ram for a Volkswagen California, and it made me realise how much prepping has started to influence practical decisions.

We already have a Kia EV9 as our daily car, but that's a company lease, so every four years we're largely dependent on whatever the market and lease options look like. The second vehicle is the one we have full control over.

We've regularly gone camping with our caravan, but the California would give us a lot more flexibility. We could leave the caravan on a campsite and still head out for a night or two with the kids and the dog, which is something we'd actually use quite often.

From a prepping perspective it also makes a lot of sense to me. We could keep the essentials organised in the vehicle all the time and be ready to leave within minutes if we ever needed to. Not because I expect to evacuate tomorrow, but because it removes a lot of last-minute stress.

Another factor is reliability. We've had a few issues with the Ram, and getting spare parts in Europe isn't always easy or quick. That has definitely played a role in the decision. A Volkswagen is simply much easier to maintain here, with parts and mechanics readily available almost everywhere. From a preparedness point of view, having a vehicle that can be repaired quickly is worth a lot.

We also consider our dog part of the family, so any vehicle we own has to work for all of us. Having enough space for the kids, the dog, and the basics without feeling cramped is a big plus.

Realistically, if there ever was a situation where you needed to leave quickly, I think a normal vehicle is far more practical than towing a caravan. A caravan is great if you have time to prepare, but flexibility wins when time is limited.

It got me wondering if anyone else has made vehicle choices with preparedness in mind. Not necessarily buying an off-road truck or something extreme, but choosing a car because it better fits your lifestyle while also making you a bit more resilient if things don't go as planned.

Hi! With so much information overload, I am interested in how are you collecting and curating information and news in the prepper area. Do You have favorite news sources and just pick up from there? Are you saving the articles? Or maybe you are in contact with someone who is "inside" in the specific area and getting updates from there?

So basically we can divide this collecting by

source:

- internet

- TV

- radio

- local community / acquiantance

Field:

- weather / environment

- finance / politics

- military

- technology (huge topic as this can go from IT to the lets say construction)

- health and safety (virus outbrakes etc...)

- philosophy and psychology (doctrines, why am I doing this etc...)

Area:

- Local vs global or some maybe some specific focus in certain location

Type:

- News vs "manual"

For example reading about the latest progress on the certain battlefield vs. learning about the motives and strategies of the belligerents, or reading about upcoming water shortages and its effects vs learning how to find preserve and store water

Are You also saving and analyzing these type of information in retrospect? Maybe applying information from certain area and measuring results

I would like to create some "information strategy" for myself, as currently I am roaming arround reddit, youtube some finance news, talking with friends etc...It certainly does something but I feel that it is missing some type of system.

I’m trying to rethink my backup power setup a bit. Not for running the whole house, more for the boring but useful stuff like router, phones, laptop, lights, maybe fridge/freezer for short periods.

Gas generators are not really practical for a lot of European homes, especially if you live in an apartment or don’t have much outdoor space. So I’ve been looking more at plug-in battery storage instead of a normal portable power station.

One model I came across is the Jackery S3 Pro Max AC. Seems more like a home battery than a camping power station, with 2.52 kWh to start and the option to expand later. The AC-coupled setup also looks useful if you already have solar or want to add storage without going full DIY.

My main question is: does this kind of plug-in home battery make more sense than a small generator or a regular portable power station? Curious what people here are using for short outages.

I have no affiliation with the project but thought its a good resource for people! Sharing mostly because its all self-hosted and open-source.

You can install it on a spare PC, download the bits of the internet you want while online, then access it all later with no internet, it just lives on the PC. You can load offline Wikipedia, medical/repair guides, OpenStreetMap.

https://www.projectnomad.us/ — setup guide and GitHub are on there.

Is anyone already using this? Curious what hardware and content packs are worth it as I am pretty new to it!

Hi people - first post...

Given the number of growing threats, from Carrington-Miyake Events, ideological civil war to nuclear ww3 - and keeping Op-sec in mind (being cautious and keeping a low profile):

1) What are your feelings about creating a prepper community rather than just looking for fellow preppers wherever you live?

2) Does it increase some risks and how can these be mitigated?

3) Are there any risks where it is better to be a lone wolf (family)?

Dear community,

I am looking at options to install an external curtain in a big window door that gets lots of afternoon sun.

I keep reading contradictory information about which is the best colour for that: answers are either black/dark or white... I don't know what to make of this information. Is there a right answer here and, if yes, which?

Alternatively, would UV-blocking vinyl be a better option? (I have to take into account that I feel confident in my abilities to install the curtain, but not so much the vinyl.)

Thanks for your help, and stay safe out there in the heat.

Check forecasted WBT (wet bulb temperature) temperatures for your area as well as just actual temperatures to get a sense for how dangerous the weather is.

Some areas that look like they may be relatively cool in terms of actual temperatures might actually be worse in terms of WBT temperatures.

WBT temperatures above 20° C are already uncomfortable for many, and anything at 25° C or above is dangerous.

Heat kills more Europeans every year than guns kill Americans.

And it's going to get hotter every year.

What are you doing to make yourself and your community more resilient to heatwave? What has worked, and what hasn't?

In my bag out kit I have a fishing line, hooks, sinkers and float. It's fairly easy to make a pole. It weighs less than 30g and is a nice "just in case" addition (and it helps to reduce stress too).

What do you recommend as "scavengeable" bait? Preferably something that can be foraged for on the spot (earthworms were my first pick).

I've downloaded probably 5 or 6 emergency preparedness apps over the years. Most ended up forgotten after a week.

AYR4all is different — not sure exactly why, but my family is still using it months later.

What I like:

- Walks you through building a real emergency kit step by step

- Custom family evacuation plan (not generic templates)

- 14 emergency scenarios to practice (earthquakes, fires, floods...)

- The XP and medals system sounds gimmicky but honestly got my kids engaged

Available in 8 languages too, which was useful for family members who don't speak English.

Anyone else use it? Curious what others think compared to alternatives.

Portugal is currently facing elevated wildfire risk in several regions, and it got me thinking about how many of us are truly prepared beyond having a few supplies stored away.

A wildfire doesn't give much warning.

If you had to leave home in the next 10 minutes:

Is your go-bag ready?

Do you know your evacuation route?

Do you have masks available?

Does your family know where to meet?

Do you have a checklist so nothing important gets forgotten?

Most people focus on gear.

I think organization is often the weakest link.

What's the one thing you consider essential for wildfire preparedness?

I just wanted to share this because I think the methods, advice and recipes for dehydrated "go" food are amazing!

If you have a dehydrator and a vacuum packer (not required but allows for longer storage) and are looking for recipes for delicious pre-prepared meals vs. dehydrated "food", then spend a few minutes looking at this website. :)

https://www.backpackingchef.com

Edit: grammar

Hey folks, I'm new here but would love to be more active on r/euroopreppers.

The article I posted above is from earlier this year.

Here in Ireland, most people AFAIK do not take advice like this seriously.

What about in your country? Are people good at stocking up a few days worth of supplies in case of something unexpected happening?

So as always, Veritasium did a brilliant job presenting facts. But my prepper mind already started racing to the multiple civilian implications.

The biggest civilian damage would be around the highly automated logistics hubs relying heavily on GPS signals for food delivery and tracking of fleet movement and second would be aircrafts mid flight.

What other challenges would there be? How hard would this hit us?

I always thought that there is a significant distinction between American preppers and European preppers. But I think there is a much deeper divide between what is "Eastern" and "Western" Europeans. And what is very interesting is how blurred the lines are. Even Germany which is by definition "a western country" has such a large legacy of both Eastern and Western cultures, simply by reference to the communist era and how much it changed Germany. But in essence, I think the divide is somewhere between Poland and Germany, with the Nordics between somewhat more "Eastern" especially when it comes to Finland. On the other spectrum, looking at Switzerland, they are in a different league when it comes to preparedness. So let's learn a bit more about each other shall we? I'll go first:

Pros of Western preppers:
Tools, gears (especially comms), financial planning, systems of response and resilience for cities, more calculated and systematic approach to prepping and a larger ecosystem of prepping as a mindset, and for the Americans, well, guns. 😄

Cons of Western preppers:
Unrealistic scenarios (a lot of doomsday preppers), very few with recent memory of traumatic experiences, untested in many circumstances, individualism above community, too gear-driven not enough skill oriented and in my humble opinion over-reliance on society as a whole in terms of lifestyle (i.e. the large consumption of heavy processed foods, as compared to the alternative of home-cooked or even self-produced foods).

Pros of Eastern preppers:
They are more rooted in a traditional lifestyle especially when it comes to food production at home, consuming more from the local sourced foods, or home cooking (especially canning and preserving). A bit more community/family driven as opposed to individualism. We still had contact with agriculture and manual labor (most of us as kids anyway) and are somewhat more inclined to this lifestyle of labor, which makes us somewhat more resilient and knowledgeable in a collapse scenario. I would add that we are used to the local black markets, haggling and bartering. We have more recent experience and consistent experience with disruption and hardship was well, the norm until recent years.

Cons of Eastern preppers:
Alcohol (specifically moonshine - which by my account many will contradict me and tell me it's a net positive and I agree, but let's put in the negative for now), corruption of the state and fighting amongst ourselves. Less reliance on authorities, they can even hinder you. Less education about prepping systems and planning, we kind of do it by "that's how it was done in the past". We do not prep that much for contingency (i.e. back-up water, plumbing and electricity), which are more accessible nowadays. And of course there are those that share the border with Russia.

One last important distinction, which I hope is relevant. Without referring to a specific scenario, I think people living in cities in EE have a back-up to move to the countryside, where many of our relatives (especially parents) live and where we have the necessary tools and staples to run autonomously from the grid for at least a while longer, whereas I feel WE city dwellers are a bit more compromised.

Hi r/EuroPreppers,

First, a big thank you to the mods for giving me the green light to post this, much appreciated !

I'm running a short, anonymous survey on preparedness habits across Europe, and I'd really value input from this community specifically. Most prepping research is US-centric, so European realities (different threats, laws, climates, cities density etc.) tend to get overlooked.

A few details up front:

• Takes about 2/3 minutes
• Fully anonymous — no names, emails, or location beyond country
• I'm doing this for building an Euro-centric Preppers/Resilience app.
• I'll post the aggregated results back here when it's done

Survey link EN: https://tally.so/r/XxOkjg

Survey link FR: https://tally.so/r/vGqpp0

Happy to answer any questions about how the data will be used. Thanks for your time!

Sick walkers rescued after drinking river water on West Highland Way | BBC News

A mountain rescue team is warning about the risks of drinking water from streams after two walkers on the West Highland Way became so ill they vomited through the night.

Both are believed to have drunk water from a stream near Conic Hill and became ill despite using portable water filters.

A reminder that organised community resilience (Lomond Mountain Rescue) beats techno-solutionism (LifeStraw). Don’t bet your life on tech gadgets.

As a side note: For all the talk of LifeStraws in these forums I can’t find any clinical validation that they are a safe and effective strategy for clean drinking water (not anecdote, not ‘expert test’, not ‘our NGO was gifted 10,000 of these and handed them out and didn’t track the results’).

It‘s one thing for the manufacturer to claim it removes 99.999…% of bacteria, or “meets NSF standards”, it’s another to say it’s an effective solution. A condom blocks 100% of sperm, but it’s still only 95% effective as a contraceptive method. Misuse, broken filters, etc have to be built into the assumption. So if anyone can point to a clinical trial of these things please do link.

But in the meantime maybe save your money and donate the price of a LifeStraw to Lomond Mountain Rescue or similar group instead…

How can this be?

Two solar panels, one smaller at least 50% or more, about 4 times lighter outputs almost the same wattage as the bigger one.

Begs the question, how to choose a good light weight high output solar panel?

The specs of the larger Jackery one dwarf the cheaper Decathlon Forclaz model

Images:

https://imgur.com/a/V9NbKKY

Goor afternoon from NL. Has anyone some experience with the brand gravipack and there exosquelette backpack. I am wondering if they good be of better use than the Decathlon backpacks which are of great value too.

Edit : ok so after some digging it seems that the gravipack is a huge bs. Sorry for the post but now I am wondering if anyone ever made some comparisons with naturehike backpack vs decathlon.

Habits, discussions, prices, anything goes.

I realised yesterday that since the Hormuz shitshow started, i have refuelled my car exactly 2 times. Lot more biking to work for me.

I doubled my canned preps and have started buying restaurant - sized food bags (pasta, cans, pickles...) way more.