Prepping – Thriving, not Surviving

There’s a difference between thriving and surviving. I notice a trend among those who call themselves preppers. There are two sorts: those who are prepared to simply go on living, and those who prepare to survive the apocalypse. The first sort have plans for growing food, hunting, trapping, collecting water, providing continuing light, creating electricity in small amounts, and a lot more. The second sort treat it like it’s a weekend warrior camp where they get to play commando.

I am among the first group. I hone my skills so that I can thrive, rather than survive. Yes, survival is important in the early days of any disaster. You have to make it through the mud slides or tornado or tsunami or whatever it is that went boom. The bottom line is, surviving is the easy part. Either you survive, or you don’t, and the answer to that question is going to come up pretty quickly. No matter how much you prep, there’s always going to be some kind of emergency that you didn’t think of that could wipe you out. Thriving, though… or, as I like to call it, “living,” is what it’s all about.

After whatever immediate circumstances mess up our civilization (because let’s be serious, the Earth, our world, is going to go right on spinning in space… unless the emergency has to do with Vogon Constructor Fleets, but that’s another matter entirely), we’re going to want to focus on getting things built into some kind of new normal. I’m one of the type of folks who hope the new normal isn’t like the old normal. I’d like to see less government, and more growing of food. But that’s me.

How do you prepare to thrive? Well, you get your life together in such a way that a disaster is only a momentary blip. I’ve chosen to do this by studying how medieval and early Colonial people survived in some of the most terrifying circumstances they’d ever encountered. I don’t need to re-invent the wheel, after all. I can see clearly how they did it. And then I practice those skills, over and over again.

Before I got sick on Friday evening, I had to start a fire. I realized I’d forgotten both my “easy to reach” lighter (ie I had one, but I’d have had to go looking for it) and my fire starters. I silently cursed myself, but then I loaded up my wood splitter and made kindling. And then I shaved off some smaller bits and made them into tinder. I used an old log that had previously been half burned as one side of my “tent” (because I like making little tents for my fires), and placed the tinder at the bottom. Over top of that, I laid some of the smaller pieces of kindling I’d made, and over those, some larger pieces. I had some extra kindling at hand, and some very dry split wood that was on the smaller side.

I used a single match, because there were only 3 left in the box and I didn’t want to waste them. They were the long ones, so I lit a candle first. Then I used the candle to re-light my long matchstick once it was close to the tinder, and with that matchstick, I got the rest of the fire going. I fed it a few pieces of kindling beyond what was already there, but I made quite the blaze, and it caught very quickly.

Why was I able to do this? Because I practiced. Making a fire on a hearth inside a home is MUCH easier than making a fire outside with wind and rain causing issues. Could I have gotten up and found my lighter and used that? Sure, I could have, but why bother? Of course, I also could have pulled out my flint and steel, but I didn’t do that, either. I did what was easiest. And I knew it was the easiest method, because I’d done it a hundred times before.

In the winter, we generally keep a fire going in the wood stove all the time. This is because I’m poor, and there’s not a lot of oil in the tank, and I like to reserve that for emergencies (like when I’m sick and don’t have the energy to feed the fire for hours on end). If the power goes out, I toss extra wood on the fire. The wood stove sits over the water pipes, which means that it’s unlikely we’ll have any frozen pipe issues. If things get cold for an extended period of time, there are other methods of warming things up, but I don’t have to worry. I’ve practiced all the skills necessary to keep the house functioning without power.

I can cook over a fire, and I do so all summer and into the fall and early winter. If I ever manage to get my outdoor stove built, I’ll probably do it most of the winter, as well, because I like cooking over a fire. It’s fun! Even if there’s no gas in the canister to run the gas stove, I can still cook outdoors, or to a certain level, on top of the wood stove (ours is meant to heat the house, not cook on, but it’s possible to do simple stuff there).

I need to know where the food comes from (my various stashes) and how to cook it. My family has eaten many of the meals that I would make out of our long term storage bins. I test them out a few times before I commit them to the bins. They’re tasty, and full of calories, because in the kind of emergency that would get me to haul them out, we’re going to require those calories.

Another question – how do you entertain yourself? If all you do is watch television, come the apocalypse, you’re going to be in a world of disappointment. Do you have books? Cards? Hoyle’s Book of Games, to let you play hundreds of different games? A cribbage set? Chess? Checkers? Go? Fox and Hounds? I have all of these, and more. I also have knowledge about sewing, both for making clothing, and of the decorative sort (which is entertainment for me).

Think of all the myriad things you do, every single day. Those are the things you have to anticipate doing after the apocalypse, but you have to know how to do them without power and internet access. Simple stuff like “how to read a paper map” is something our children might not know. It behooves us to educate ourselves, and them, and be ready should we ever need it.

And what happens if the apocalypse never comes? Well, we’ll have a hearty respect for our ancestors, and a bunch of really awesome and cool skills to show our grandkids and great grandkids. I see no way that it’s a losing scenario.