PS -- I sympathize with you, bubblyrat. I can't imagine living in a society that doesn't allow you to protect your loved ones. Good luck.

I've lived in this oppressed society, alone, for forty odd years, after living with my family before that, and guess what, I've never met anything I needed to be protected from with guns.

A friend having a spat with some teenagers who didn't know how to cope with a surge of testosterone. Only weapon involved a metal tipped cricket stump. Which I was able to remove, as it wasn't actually being held as a weapon.

Verbal bullying from a poorly socialised neighbour.

A brother in law having a dog set on him, and a bite around his waist.

I don't think guns would have made things better, and could well have made things much worse.

There's nothing to be sorry about for people living in a society with very few guns. Except for those where they aren't as few as they should be.

Getting back to the food. I don't think pulses are so good, even if you have your own water supply, and a supply of fuel, because they have a finite shelf life, after which they become very difficult to reconstitute. My own emergency supplies tend to the tinned or sachets with liquid in, and are only intended to last through the flu. I had a fleeting moment of paranoia at the time of Bernard Matthew's outbreak, and built up a bit so it wasn't just for me being off work sick, but the supermarket delivery system being off sick as well.

Penny