A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work. Society made that not be falling apart but life could still be beating you down. And that circumstance is a lot more likely and common. Common things like medical issues or shortages or divorce can whack you on the head and turn your life around. And they happen all the time.

 

I had all the above happen at the same time with the added burden of being a single dad of a 6 and 9 year old (mom was not in the picture), and job loss. Anyone who has not had something similar happen to them has no idea on how bad things can get in a very short period of time. How many of you went to bed for three years hungry, wondering how you were going to feed your kids, tears in your eyes while pleading in your prayers for God to help you with to make it through the next day. I did that for three years before I got a job capable of supporting us. It took another 3 years working 6 12 hour days per week to pay down my debit and slow down. Missed what should have been the best years of my, and my kids lives.

All you that keep saying stupid stuff like bring it on, I'm ready.... You have no idea at all of how bad things can get or the dark thoughts that creep into your mind when your kids are hungry and you struggle to even get them a birthday cake. They each received a gift or two at Christmas only because I had friends and family insist on giving me just enough to get them something small. BTW: the same few who are welcome here if SHTF. I have siblings who will be told to kiss my rear end.

Until you are tested you have no idea what real friends are and what is truly important in life.

 

I've been at a point where I fished the last penny from under the sofa cushions in order to buy something to eat.
No cash, no credit card, no bank balance.
Is that a SHTF situation, or just hard times? You decide.
There's not always a whole lot of difference.

 

I've been at a point where I fished the last penny from under the sofa cushions in order to buy something to eat.
No cash, no credit card, no bank balance.
Is that a SHTF situation, or just hard times? You decide.
There's not always a whole lot of difference.

We think (wife and me) that it's a SHTF moment.
Been there, done that, and recovered.
Funny bit about it all was the world was never the same again.
It was BETTER!
Why so? Once you've reached the bottom, like being in a SHTF scenario, it was all up from then on.

 

The silliest idea that preppers have, is that it will return to normal, and everything will be fine again. At some unknown point it "might" stabilize, but it will not be the "normal" they craved and remembered.

 

Hard times to me is somewhat personal as in you have little or no: money, food, shelter... but maybe you can get some help to get back on your feet from injury/illness SHTF's almost every one in that same boat, rule of law is now the Lord of the Flies.

 

SHTF for me tends to include an element of violence that Hard Times doesn’t. Just my opinion.

 

Defining "SHTF" is probably the biggest obstacle to discussions on this board. For some, it is a realistic scenario like a major car accident. For others it is nothing less than the apocalypse or zombies. I think most of us fall somewhere in between.

 

It is easy to define SHTF....SHTF = Biden!

 

I would never call myself a prepper or survivalist.
Just seems to nerdy to me or something.
I don't draw any other sort of distinction between those terms and who I am.
When I was a little kid running the woods , I thought "what if I get lost?"
So I took actions to help prevent that.
When I began riding dirt bikes , I thought "what if I have a flat?"
SO I took actions to deal with that.
When I got my drivers license , I thought "what if I end up in a ditch?"
Again , I took actions to help deal with that.
As I got older , it became "what if I'm out of a job?"
"What if the stores are closed?"
"What if I can't get my meds?"
I don't stress over these things but understand sitting on my thumb is not something that I figure I need to be doing.
I'm not a survivalist because I don't own a camo Rambo vest.
I'm not a prepper because I don't have a bus buried in my backyard.
But if anything happens from something minor like a vehicle breakdown to something much worse such as foreign troops marching down my street ...... I have things to do

 

If I am not covered in fecal matter when I turn the fan on to cool off...It is not SHTF.

 

If the fan turns on, either you are well prepared or it's not SHTF...

 

My standard/templet for prepping is WWII. Starting 1938-39'ish with the Spanish Revolution.........and "SOMEWHAT" back to a NEW normal of stability in the "MID" too late 1950's. That is roughly 17 to 19'ish years of Certified HELL. A hell that we really can't comprehend.

 

One of my grandmothers sometimes talked about it, she was born in 1915 in Germany , lived through WWI and II , had a kid in 1942 ( my mother) , shortly after her husband went to the Russian front and never came back. So she was a single mom with nothing living on a farm her ( gone) husband's relatives owned. The farm had no electric or indoor plumbing until much later. Still had no proper utilities when I was a kid in the 70s. She then lived as a housekeeper of some old man who's wife died until he died and she finally lived with my parents. That's a hard life. She was never a happy person. She always grew a large garden. She never wasted money on anything.

 

SHTF is more and other stuff than full out nuclear war...

the massive recession we have incoming? thats a MAJOR SHTF that could spout violence when people have no food and no money to buy food with and you might not even have enough money to buy/pay for your home. and if you don't have a home or food, who cares about electricity and computer networks? ;-)

 

Here's what you need:
Shelter, water, food & meds. Everything, and I mean everything else is luxury - been there done that.
Dispite what I have been through even I don't really realize how bad SHTF can be.

 

Both of my parents lived through the depression. My mother has always said, the people my age and younger have no idea what hard times actually are. I agree with her. I have no desire to experience the things she experienced as a child.

I hit a bump in the road, as a young adult, but it was NOTHING like people experienced in the 1930’s.

I don’t want to see the SHTF and I don’t want to see hard times, a disaster or a depression. However, those are things I don’t have control over. I can try to cushion the blow, by preparing for the scenarios I can think of. There are probably some scenarios that I have not thought of.

 

SHTF is "regular" stuff that ordinarily happens to people, ranging from burnt dinner, fender bender, oversleeping, sick kid, broken water main, bad grade or held back a year, tornado, identitiy theft, burglary, house fire, hurt pet, earthquake, lost job or reduced hours, hurricane, farm animal in distress, getting old, etc., from which people normally recover, to a greater or lesser degree.

TEOTWAWKI is something that would cause a very long-term destruction of modern civilization, from which recovery would be "never" or at least generation(s). TEOTWAWKI would be world-wide, or at least continent/hemisphere-wide, such that meaningful help from elsewhere would not be forthcoming, and ROL would fundamentally change. Even WROL, some new ROL would emerge, which may be very different from ROL now).

A lot of use of SHTF as a term on SB seems to equate it to TEOTWAWKI /ZA

Sometimes seems like people forget that "regular" SHTF is much more likely to happen (actually inevitably will happen in everyone's life).

FWIW, I don't prep for TEOTWAWKI /ZA

 

YES! I don't see TEOTWAWKI used enough. Most people are lazy and use SHTF, which is surviving things like forest fires or being fired in a down job market, to mean the end of the world as we know it. SHTF is surviving the worst life throws at you without running to daddy government to save you. TEOTWAWKI means that you ain't gonna go to the store to buy bullets anymore because the hoard of zombies just burned it to the ground and the cops joined the zombie hoard. Nobody is going to save you, so most probably you are going do die off.

The first is realistic, the second, not as much. Lots of people on prepper sites plan for the second one and skip over planning for the first. Which for some of us is silly. If you can't make this world work, you probably aren't going to last too long when it is gone.

 

Palm,

My view mirror yours.

Even in the worst of times, some still had medical supplies. I have inlaws who went through Christmas invasion of Hong Kong (after our Pearl Harbor) and experienced the rest: the actual war, the evac to Canton city and beyond, the Civil War ,etc.

Some were hurting. Some were set up.

 

It seems surviving with these thing is just making to best of what we cannot control. For me that is life not a SHTF.

My interpretation is SHTF is when things come apart at the seams and you're fighting with every asset you have to stay alive and get away.

Survivalism is simply the act of being out of the fray, hidden, and being self-sufficient with yourself, family, or like minded individuals. It may include fighting off other when necessary.

 

Precursor to SHTF is S hitting his diaper 24/7. FJB and his supplicant traitor d-rat morons.

 

My 2 coins of some denomination FWIW ... This is a definition tangent;

Some in our national community use "prepper" and "survivalist" as synomyms".

One of our Forum Members gave a clear example to distinguish both terms. I rely and use it.

Still, must emphasize to pay attention to context and narrative plus conversations' content.

 

This is a good thread. I think there is rarely such a neat cutoff between "everything is okay and people are going to starbucks and discussing lgbt stuff" to "zombie apocalypse". Even in my case, it sort of "fluctuates" and there is a huge in-between, an era of semi-SHFT defined by increased uncertainty. Like, if for the last weeks when I go by a local gas station and there are no gas prices because there is usually no gas, is that SHTF? BUT if all the stores are working and people are beginning to live as though it's business as usual, what does that make it? Add to that the air raid sirens that "sort of" exist but are now mostly ignored

 

I'm in Chester County, PA. Times are still great here for many people. They see higher prices, but their income can cover them so let's go out to eat and buy designer clothing and go on vacation.

But it's not everyone, and I see people starting to get it every week. Some of it's little ways, realizing that their groceries are a lot more, and big ways that they can't afford their apartment anymore and have to move to a cheaper area. Using more FB groups to get 'free' stuff, going grocery shopping at Aldi instead of Whole Foods.

 

When I was a teen, the Arab oil embargo happened....it just made sense to me even at 13 that someday we would be fighting over oil...fast forward ten years...I started storing goods after the second hundred flood hit the city where I was living....two years in a row. My grandparents were born in the 1880s...they always had food stored...it seemed ridiculous to me that people could/should depend on the government, so I started making my own plans. I prepare now with the understanding that 1. terrible things are likely to happen that will jeapordize my well being, and 2. stupid, unprepared people are going to try to steal my things. You can call the event what you want SHTF, EMP, Joe Biden, global warming, cancer...they all affect me the same way.

 

For me being a survivalist means being able to fend for oneself during a SHTF. Maybe my idea of a SHTF environment is wrong. I see such an environment as being one without electricity, running water and sewer systems, banking, computer networks, etc.

Many discussions seem to suppose something else. Am I wrong?

In my experience, SHTF, is on a spectrum and often depends on scale and duration. What may just be an inconvenience to some, maybe a major crisis to another. We all have to define what SHTF is for our own preparation. I literally have the water well in my house, potable water access is not high on my SHTF concerns, but for some living in a more arid climate with fewer water resources or mostly dependent on city water, that may be a more significant factor in defining their SHTF.

If I lose my job for a few months, it’s a short duration, small-scale SHTF; it won’t affect anyone but me and my wife and it’s really not a major SHTF. It would affect my single son living paycheck to paycheck far more severely.

Electricity will affect us all to some degree. Many have prepared to live off grid, some minimize their electricity-use footprint and needs; for many it will be a major SHTF for anything more than a week, for others, it will be a minor inconvenience. We don’t have to worry too much about winter heating in the Southeast, but at the peak of the hot summer months and high humidity, life will be uncomfortable.

As the scale and duration grow, SHFT will impact us all to some degree…

ROCK6

 

Sorry I cannot see a job loss as any form of SHTF. I was once reminded: "People that want a job; have a job." You must be willing to take any job or 3 until you find the one you want.

 

well if we need to "define" it that way then it is a massive SHTF EOTWAWKI yada yada if they lose they iphone or break a nail...

SHTF = more minor aka personal/local area for shorter period 1-2 weeks to like 3-6 months possibly longer
EOTW.... = massive problem causing system wide homelessness/hunger/whatever with no expectancy of returning to "normal"

Ukraine is a high end SHTF (a bit above broken nail and lost iphone) but it is not an EOTW... some of the ukranians that came here to Denmark? Yeah they have already decided to return home so they can rebuild and sow the farmlands, yes there is still war, but life continues (for most)

 

Wow, learnt a lot of new terms!
The thing about Ukraine is it really varies, for example Kyiv is in a situation similar to the "US 1970's oil crisis" right now + air raid sirens, but overall life is sorta normal, so I wouldn't even call it SHTF ( it was SHTF for the 1st month of the war), but the parts of the country near to where the action is right now and what is shown on the news, yes- there it's one of those abbreviations. I think, it will only be possible to define the correct label later on, in hindsight.

The other thing is the lack of predictability/stability - like, will everyone in Europe be living in EOTWAWKI in 1-2 months? No one can predict anything. I didn't predict what was gonna happen in Ukraine and thought the media was just fearmongering/saber-rattling

 

For me there is an overlap.....One man's SHTF is another's bad month. We'll all know if the real big deal ever hits us, but it's just as important to be ready for the 'lesser' shtf's that can occur without warning. They happen to folks every day.
-Husband keels over from a heart attack, this happened twice in the past month around us....is the family ready to carry on? Can they afford to?
-Wife gets stage 4 cancer out of the blue and has an agonizing year before passing. They had the $$ to deal with it, but what about the other tolls on the family and their health?
-Storm cuts off power for a few days...who is ready?
- Car accidents, farm accidents, etc...are we ready?

Although a lot of these involve money, they can also F up the family and survivors beyond belief.

 

all of that is SHTF stuff, and we all die (sorry to say) so cancer, ar accidents, farm accidents etc. is just deaths, and unless you are the one dying, it is all just SHTF, the world doesn't end (even though it feels like it with sorrow) but you can still buy groceries, you can still go to the bank, the goverment is still around and such. will a death and/or change of income be life altering? yeah they can but the world is still there, that's the difference.

 

Waxing philosophically here, hard times don't have to be just financial, same for shtf. But in general, hard times are related to finances, and shtf is societal. My personal definition is what sits on/against the nightstand. Once we move from the "on" to something leaning against, I'm in shtf mode. Either way we're just saving for a rainy day, whether it be a job loss or zombie ebola herpes, or if nothing happens a comfortable retirement playing in the garden.

 

Yup.

We everyday carry handguns, even around the house.

Should it get to the point where we HAVE TO carry long guns, well that'd be a completely different world...

 

I see such an environment as being one without electricity, running water and sewer systems, banking, computer networks, etc.

here we call that being Amish.

 

Most Amish use banks, and my uncle has a huge steel shed filled with chest feezers that he rents out to the Amish. A fun job is having a multi-passenger van and driving the Amish and all the power tools they use from different job sites. I had them build a steel shed for me when the old corn crib burned down and tge insurance was for replacement only. They had really nice tools, plus had no problem borrowing mine. Most outsider think Amish are a lot more self sufficient than they are.

Sorry I cannot see a job loss as any form of SHTF. I was once reminded: "People that want a job; have a job." You must be willing to take any job or 3 until you find the one you want.

Maybe not today where there are plenty jobs to be found, but back in '08 and a few years after it was a huge shtf. Many people became homeless when the housing market crashed. If you were a builder, it was almost impossible to find work that paid what you were making. No work and the mortgage doesn't get paid. No home and you're homeless. And before you say something else clueless, many of these builders were working 60 or 70 hours a week, raking in the cash. Then nobody wanted houses, and so the builders were let go. Finding a $10 an hour job to replace a $30 an hour job, plus overtime didn't work. These people were more than willing to work, they had been working harder than most keyboard warriors, but there were no good paying jobs to be found. History is not something that should be forgotten so easily. 2008 was not that long ago.

 

I guess SHTF is a lot like porn.
While I may not be able to define it , I'll know it when I see it.

 

I see such an environment as being one without electricity, running water and sewer systems, banking, computer networks, etc.

Kind'a like life in rural Alaska.

 

For those unprepared a two day power outage could seem like SHTF, I don’t feel definitions are that important.

Do what you can with what you have and if you’ve experienced disruptions and hard times you’re farther ahead than most, even hobby preppers.

 

Were we live it's not unusual to be out of power a couple of times a year. Most of the time it's a couple of hours, but every once in awhile it's 4-8 days. We can cope with it fine during the summer. The winter is rough. Most people in our neighborhood go to family, friends or a hotel. In the winter we just break out the camping gear and it's freaking cold. I wish we had a wood stove at those times, but it isn't practical in our current house. We did replace the electric stove with a gas one, so we can cook and heat water.