Whats next?

[HoneyBadger]

Depends on your plans. A few ideas:

Bug out: Take a day (weekend?) to practice some primitive survival skills - head into the woods and build a shelter, practice building fires (if safe and legal to do so in that area) practice making traps and snares. Practice using the tools in your kit. Test out all your gear. Can you really hoof it 10 miles with that 40lb backpack and a rifle? Does your vehicle have the right care/tools/supplies to help you bug out? properly inflated full size spare? extra food and water? warm clothes? jumper cables and tool kits? We practice and train in order to identify the gaps before we need to actually cross the bridge.

Bug in (it sounds like this is your plan... and I think this should be everyone's primary focus): Does your plan for heating the house really work as well as you thought it would? What about your plumbing/bathroom/sanitation situation? Are you prepared for broken windows? Do you have supplies to reinforce doors, cover windows, and secure your home? What about defense of home/street/neighborhood? How about non-SHTF home defense? Have you already taken good measures to make your house less of a target and more secure? Do you have duct tape, plastic, appropriate masks, tarps, etc? Are you prepared to stay in your house for several days completely sealed off from the outside?

Any situation: Good gun training is always applicable. Medical training and knowledge is never a waste. Having good organization and a written plan will go a long ways. Is your family prepared for bad situations too?

That covers a lot of things... many of which you've probably already done or considered - But hopefully if those suggestions don't apply to you, someone here can benefit from them.

[BushMasterBoy]

I bought a 29ft 1979 motorhome on a P30 chassis. 68 k miles. Lil over 3 K$. So far I have put on a new Holley carb with manual choke on the engine, 454 GM big block. Turbo 475 3 speed auto trans. 4 wheel discs Hydroboost brakes on 19.5 tires. New shocks, changed the oil and trans fluid. I'm gonna add a giant trans cooler. Bought a new custom made radiator. It is going to get some headers from Hooker, I bought two sets and will probably go with the ceramic coating set.
Generator runs flawless. Fuel tanks hold 130 gallons of gas. Means the generator will run about 130 hours. Or 1000 mile range. Changed all the interior lights to LED bulbs. I am going to add a solar panel or two and some deep cell batteries. Brand new spare distributor, and I have a few spare alternators. If anything happens to the house, I can still stay here. I have a 250 gallon propane tank I own, with a wet leg.
I think when I am done, I will have about 8 grand into it. Most of the modifications were bought from ebay. The hardest part will be designing and installing the small wood stove. All I need now is to buy some waterfront property in the mountains to bug out to...

[hunterhawk]

Need to paint that thing like light yellowish green over green! I love stripes! :-)

[BushMasterBoy]

Need to paint that thing like light yellowish green over green! I love stripes! :-)

I got some "earth tone yellow" CARC(chemical agent resistant coating), think desert storm tan! I just found another roof leak today, the entire body and roof are made of sandwich of thin aluminum and styrofoam two inch thick. As soon as the weather clears up, I am going to fiberglass the entire roof in woven roving and two part marine grade epoxy. That is the about the only way for a permanent cure. The front body and rear are already made of fiberglass.

[TheGrey]

I bought a 29ft 1979 motorhome on a P30 chassis. 68 k miles. Lil over 3 K$. So far I have put on a new Holley carb with manual choke on the engine, 454 GM big block. Turbo 475 3 speed auto trans. 4 wheel discs Hydroboost brakes on 19.5 tires. New shocks, changed the oil and trans fluid. I'm gonna add a giant trans cooler. Bought a new custom made radiator. It is going to get some headers from Hooker, I bought two sets and will probably go with the ceramic coating set.
Generator runs flawless. Fuel tanks hold 130 gallons of gas. Means the generator will run about 130 hours. Or 1000 mile range. Changed all the interior lights to LED bulbs. I am going to add a solar panel or two and some deep cell batteries. Brand new spare distributor, and I have a few spare alternators. If anything happens to the house, I can still stay here. I have a 250 gallon propane tank I own, with a wet leg.
I think when I am done, I will have about 8 grand into it. Most of the modifications were bought from ebay. The hardest part will be designing and installing the small wood stove. All I need now is to buy some waterfront property in the mountains to bug out to...

Now THAT is a grand thing. I can't believe how low the mileage is!

[Irving]

The original owners were probably too embarrassed to drive it anywhere.

[brutal]

I bought a 29ft 1979 motorhome on a P30 chassis. 68 k miles. Lil over 3 K$. So far I have put on a new Holley carb with manual choke on the engine, 454 GM big block. Turbo 475 3 speed auto trans. 4 wheel discs Hydroboost brakes on 19.5 tires. New shocks, changed the oil and trans fluid. I'm gonna add a giant trans cooler. Bought a new custom made radiator. It is going to get some headers from Hooker, I bought two sets and will probably go with the ceramic coating set.
Generator runs flawless. Fuel tanks hold 130 gallons of gas. Means the generator will run about 130 hours. Or 1000 mile range. Changed all the interior lights to LED bulbs. I am going to add a solar panel or two and some deep cell batteries. Brand new spare distributor, and I have a few spare alternators. If anything happens to the house, I can still stay here. I have a 250 gallon propane tank I own, with a wet leg.
I think when I am done, I will have about 8 grand into it. Most of the modifications were bought from ebay. The hardest part will be designing and installing the small wood stove. All I need now is to buy some waterfront property in the mountains to bug out to...

Now it just needs a cow catcher and some body armor.

[BushMasterBoy]

Once you got the bug out vehicle or second hideaway residence covered, I would think (NBC) nuclear, biological and chemical protection. Do you have gas masks? I mean really good grade gas masks such as M40 or MCU2P with extra filters. Get the canteens you can drink out of with the mask. We are in a good location to procure high grade military gas masks as they show up in yard sales and thrift stores. Do not buy a M17! They are a last resort only! I also recommend a geiger detector. I bought the Gamma Scout model. I bought a broken one off of ebay and sent it in for repair calibration, cost me $260 total, runs constantly- battery lasts ten years. Sucks to eat food or drink contaminated from radioactive fallout. Or breathe it in. My father died from exposure to radioactive material weapons accident. Took 40 years then suddenly he had multiple myeloma.
Get all the vaccinations. When the SHTF the medical system will be overloaded. Do you have a recent tetanus shot?
Do you have a water distiller? Radionuclides will get through your water filter system. I don't even trust reverse osmosis. It would probably take filtering, reverse osmosis and distillation to get it really clean. I don't have a reverse osmosis system. Still lots of stuff to buy...

http://purewaterfreedom.com/filter-radiation

http://www.enlistment.us/field-manua...handbook.shtml


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M17_gas_mask

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M40_Field_Protective_Mask

http://www.gammascout.com/

[Roger Ronas]

lots of good info in this thread so far.
IMHO, the other stuff to think about is: Good alcohol, for trading medical and just to relax.
Precious metals, gold and silver, trading and purchasing goods.
Herbs and spices, they can make a turd taste good.
Copies of ALL important documents on a flash drive and maybe even a couple hard copies on waterproof paper.
AMMO, AMMO and more AMMO, used when you have to get ugly to support and feed your family. Can also be used for trading.

I am no where near ready, but my health would prevent me from doing anything outside my home.

HTH
Roger

[GilpinGuy]

Over the years, I've come to realize that financial stability is probably the number one thing to work on with regard to preparation. There is zero point in stocking up on, anything really, if you are still making credit card payments on, anything really. I think you're pretty squared away financially, but if I could go back 10 years and start all over again, that's where I change how I view prepping and survival.

This is awesome advice IMHO and we are working on being debt free, besides the house and one vehicle, by August. After August, we'll make double or triple payments on the one vehicle and get that done. Then it's just the house and we pay cash for everything.

Debt is financial slavery.