Prepping for What?

I posted about prepping a bit back on GFZ. I think it’s a topic that needs to be covered on a regular basis, and even if you have been doing it for a dog’s age, the reminders help get you in the right head space. Now, I don’t do the whole “deep state bunker prep” thing. First, I don’t believe the world will go into that much chaos, that quickly. It’s going to be a slow decline (and in my very strong opinion, the pandemic proved that). Second, and more importantly, bunker prep isn’t sustainable.

I don’t know if any of you have watched Love, Death, and Robots (it’s on Netflix if you haven’t, and it’s well worth the watch), but there’s a couple of fairly amazing shorts that cover prepping topics. The one I’m personally thinking of is in season 2, when the three robot friends are touring America after the death of all the humans. They walk around an area where a bunch of people lived in bunkers. They’re all dead, too. Another show, can’t remember the name of it, shows a couple who stays two years in their bunker, and when they open the door they find out that the entire Earth has been destroyed and they’re just floating around on a chunk of ground. These both illustrate the problem with bunker prep.

If you set up a bunker for short term emergencies, that’s fine. It is not, however, a solution for surviving TEOTWAWKI. Eventually, you run out of food, water, or air. And then you die. Bunkers, pre-pack food (like MREs or emergency buckets), and hoarding ammo and firearms are basically just a way to die painfully and slowly.

Real prepping (yes, I said what I said) is learning enough skills to survive after TEOTWAWKI. Real preppers don’t waste time figuring out ways to try and survive a planet buster bomb or other doomsday scenarios, because there’s no point. If the planet is destroyed, you’re just going to die. If a plague comes through and you catch it, you’re possibly going to die. If someone bombs your city, you may die. These are not things to prep FOR.

Prepping is what you do after you survive. Yes, have a bunch of food stores set up, because that’s important. There might not be a grocery store to go visit, or it might be empty, or being run by a despot (who isn’t the current government). You may need to shelter to avoid a firestorm or waves of nuclear fallout or insurgents or invaders. That’s short term stuff.

After the firestorm or fallout or aliens move on, you’ll come out of your hidey hole, and then the real work begins. Surviving is easy. Living is a lot more complex and difficult.

I’ve talked about it before, saving seeds, learning skills, putting food up that’s shelf stable, making short, medium, and long term plans for emergencies. But how to you go about it all? There’s no one answer for how to prep for surviving and thriving. You have to come up with your own plan, that fits your family and your part of the world. The emergencies that I plan for likely aren’t the ones that should be planned for in a big city like Boston or NYC, for instance. I live in the boonies, and there are other issues I’ll have to deal with. City people will have to deal with zombies (the name for those who wander about robbing and pillaging during emergencies) and rationing and figuring out how and when to escape. People near the equator will have to plan for hot weather, and people farther north will have to plan for cold winters, possibly without electricity or dinosaur squeezings.

There are a lot of different ways to go about building up emergency supplies and skills. I personally prefer the “small to big” way, because it is sustainable over time, and it keeps you involved as you go along. It doesn’t really leave you sitting “fully prepped” at any point, and so you’re always refocusing on what’s important to you.

So what’s a small prep? I consider a small, starter prep to be an EDC or Every Day Carry kit. For me, this is a very tiny package that I have in the bottom of my purse. There’s a mini first aid kit, soap and a compressed towel, a day of my meds, and some kind of shelter (in summer, an umbrella… in winter, an emergency foil blanket). I always have fire, too, of some kind. These are items that address the “Rule of Three” in small, for me, for a day. They’re meant to cover things I might run into while going to the grocery store or visiting a friend.

The next size up is also considered small prep by me, and that’s the “get home bag.” Everyone in my family has a get home bag. Each one is different, and they’re all meant to address the needs of that one person, over a 72 hour period. The idea is it’s got enough in it to allow you to get home under most circumstances. Mine contains a couple of weapons, a change of clothes, extra socks and underwear, a personal first aid kit, an MRE, a couple of energy bars, a fire kit (lighter, matches, flint and steel, cotton balls with Vaseline, charcloth, and a tiny pack of tinder), a plastic fork/spoon combo, a small bowl (mine is wood, other people use plastic or metal), a military poncho and detachable liner (ie the woobie), paracord, safety pins, a foil emergency blanket, a military style canteen with the metal cup attached, a short handled shovel, a miniature hatchet that has a built in multi-tool, a sewing kit with patches and pre-threaded needles, and a few other bits and bobs. All of this is in a soft sided backpack that I practice hiking with on the regular.

A medium prep is making a two week prep kit. I assemble mine and stick them into Rubbermaid bins, because they seal well and mice seem to leave them alone. I also use white “homer buckets” for some things. I used to make a big bucket of all beans, and one of rice, and another of something else. I stopped doing that because over the beginning of the pandemic, we dipped into our supplies. It sucked having to open 8 buckets to make a meal. Instead, I now make each bucket or bin self-contained. Each one has some beans, some rice, some canned meat, some fish, some ammo, some fire supplies, and so on. Each bin is a little different from the others, as well, to help combat food fatigue. This is working much better for my family.

Large preps include both bugging in and bugging out styles. For bugging in, you’re aiming to supply yourself with 18 months of food, seeds to plant enough food to recoup what you eat over the 18 months you’re living on stores, firearms and ammo and reusable weaponry such as bow and arrows and atlatls for hunting with, and things to purify water with. For bugging out, you need to factor in your health (can you actually bug out, walking for days while carrying a heavy pack and watching over your family?), any vehicles or animals you have, what you’re going to take, and what you’re capable of taking. Bugging out might also include having a remote property or cache of gear that you can get at after the first part of a larger emergency is over. A great example of “big prep” and bugging in can be seen in the first season of The Last of Us, third episode, “Long, Long Time”. In it, a couple survive in a compound because one of them had excellent preps and was ready for pretty much anything. The episode could be stand alone, if you want to watch it.

You can’t go from zero to Big Preps in a day. Even if you’re independently wealthy, it’s going to take time and effort to make the plans and gather the goods. I’m betting none of us is rich, and most of us are the opposite of rich. So we prep in parts. Start with a couple of small preps. Get your EDC and your get home bag ready, and then use them. Then, start picking up things on sale, or get one extra item each grocery trip. Spread the cost out over time, so that it isn’t overwhelming. Take your time, and practice using all your preps. Use what you store, and store what you use!

Start setting aside money, too. Money might not be useful after the emergency is over (or it might, we’ve no idea), but it’s very useful right now. If you get used to setting aside $10 or $25 from every paycheck, at the end of the year you’ll have quite a bit of money. This can be used to buy a “big ticket item” like a generator or propane tanks, or even a half a cow and a really big freezer to store it in. Bluntly, it might also be of use DURING a big emergency, at the beginning. Some people, too many people, are greedy twats. You might know the money won’t be worth anything, but if you wave a thousand bucks in someone’s face, they might decide that it’s worth it for them.

Aside from small, medium, and large preps that are items, start storing up skills, too. Join a local shooting club and go practice twice a month so you’re familiar with your weapons. Join the SCA and learn how to fight with an axe and use a bow. Take a sewing class and learn how to make clothing and bags. Volunteer to help at a local sheep farm at sheering time, and educate yourself on the methods used. Pick up a book at the library and experiment with making soap from scratch. Cultivate a garden and learn what you like and don’t like in the way of vegetables, and how to save the seeds at the end of each season, and how to amend the soil so you can keep using it. Have “power free” days where you turn off the modern world at your power box, and see how it feels to be entirely without modern amenities.  All these things build your knowledge.

Knowledge is power. If you know about something, you’ve already got a leg up on that thing. Making light bulbs was much easier than coming up with the idea for them! So store up knowledge like it’s gold… because it is.

I am not sure what aspects of prepping I want to cover over the next little while. If there’s a particular subject or idea you’d like to discuss, please let me know in the comments!