Preparedness or Paranoia?

Recommended Viewing!

From: AnalyticalSurvival

A video that explores the driving principles behind a prepper lifestyle. Are extensive emergency preparations really based on notions of preparedness, or is it - in the end - just paranoia? You decide. Enjoy! --GM

I grew up on a farm. We canned, butchered, put up hay etc. This isn't paranoia it's common sense and survival. I have chickens cause I like fresh eggs. I have a pond cause I like fresh fish and know what the fish ate. I keep an extra 500 gallon tank of propane because we do have power outages like in 07 where we were out for 11 days.

Other things--well?

‘Course It’ll Always Be There
https://tracemypreps.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/course-itll-always-be-there/

  When people ask me why I prep, I tell them–assuming they are actually willing to listen to the answer–that we have five basic needs: food, water, shelter, security and energy. These needs are delivered via a series of integrated systems. In an emergency, big or small, when one or more of those systems fail, the delivery of these basic needs may be in jeopardy. We, as individuals, are powerless to control these systems or fix them when they fail. At that time, all you can depend on is the preparations you have previously made.   ---CONTINED---

We prep because while Husband was in the military, we lived in a lot of places where natural disasters happened. Our first taste was his first command, when an earthquake took out one main highway to the obscure place we lived, and then a mudslide took out the other main highway. Food had to be flown in. This was back in 1979...a head of lettuce was $6, as was a gallon of milk. Adjusted for inflation, that would be like paying around $20 for either one now.

So we started keeping a stock cupboard with enough food for a couple months. Since then we've lived through broken infrastructure with no power/water up to a month or more due to:

Odd/even gas days
4 typhoons
1 earthquake
2 typhoons (power for 2 hours per day for 3 months)
1 hurricane (no power for over a week, neighbors banded together to eat and patrol streets at night)
2 blizzards (58 total days trapped in house, no work/school)
Prairie fires
Flooding
Hurricane
Ice storm
Unseasonably cold/snowy weather

The political and economic reasons are just as good, but our prepping started up close and personal due to being in natural disasters.

Cinnamon wrote:We prep because while Husband was in the military, we lived in a lot of places where natural disasters happened.  

I think for most people prepping is an 'after-effect' consideration.

There are some people around here who are very self-sufficient - they pretty much live off the land and the season (although they still enjoy the benefits of infrastructure).

But it amazes me how many people here don't prep. They don't even have a few days worth of food in their houses!

When a snow or ice storm is predicted, the store shelves are stripped of essentials and they go out and pay top dollar for generators. As soon as the crisis is over, the generators are returned or sold for pennies on the dollar, used. And the next year, the same people do it all over again!

SMH.

I agree! Prepping come in many forms and application. FEMA says have enough of food and water for 72 hours. That's a good start and sufficient for localized minor disasters. Major disasters, where services are overwhelmed a cache for 72 hours isn't enough and you quickly go from prepared to survival. It's not hard or costly to be better prepared.

I have friends who have spent thousands of dollars on food supplies from the many companies catering and profiting from preppers. First, you have to have several simple plans which boil down to... do you stay or do you go. Food, water and shelter sounds simple but really isn't. All freeze dried food requires water to reconstituted. Boiling is almost always recommended, so you need a heating source.

Here is a few very inexpensive thoughts... call it prepping on the cheap. First off, I store rice and oats in two liter soda bottles. I lived in Asia where rice is the main food source. You can add meat or veggies and spice to make it more flavorful and nutritional. I'm also a fan of tuna, chicken and beef in pouches and not cans. I have bottled water, but also have MSR & Sawyer purification systems and a Steripen. I know in my town we have gravity fed water supply and my plan it to fill up both bathtubs in an emergency. I have three different heating sources and several possibilites to cook. I've taught survival and outdoor cooking classes. In the class I give out #10 cans, tin sheets and church keys(can openers). Everyone learn how to make a hobo stove and cook with it. So when propane, butane, white gas and heat tabs run out... wood and even dried grass can be used in a hobo stove.

Prepping isn't hard and doesn't have to be expensive... surviving is what you make it.

Read this story. It may give you a new way to look at things and consider possibilities.

https://medium.com/s/story/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437

Keep an open mind and don't be complacent with normalcy bias or worry about ridicule. We have a gift to see things differently than others do. Almost anything is life is "when" not "if". Just because there hasn't been any major catastrophe for America since ww2 that is the anamoly not the norm. We are living in the outlier. We are overdue for upheaval and hardship.

Good article Drinkthekoolaid. I worked in Bosnia and saw first hand what people did to survive. We can learn for history and I often reference the Great Depression in our country. People in the cities didn't do as well as the rural and farm areas. If it weren't for churches setting up soup kitchens many many more people would've died. When I get back to my computer I'll share some disturbing projections if it happened today.

Scudrunner wrote:Good article Drinkthekoolaid.  I worked in Bosnia and saw first hand what people did to survive.  We can learn for history and I often reference the Great Depression in our country.  People in the cities didn't do as well as the rural and farm areas.  If it weren't for churches setting up soup kitchens many many more people would've  died.  When I get back to my computer I'll share some disturbing projections if it happened today.

Thanks. I really appreciate the "mathematical case to be a prepper" article. It explains things to non preppers in a different way that they are used to hearing and will re-enforce what we already know and think.


I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions and projections later.

My wife and I prep because it gives great piece of mind, while we don't call it prepping it just seems like the smart thing to do... I was talking to a friend at the local hardware store recently and another gentleman asked me if I was one of them crazy preppers with all the guns and food stocked up and I told him no. In hindsight I should have asked him if he was one of those stupid people that always believed that food will always be at the store no matter what happened....

People will always look at folks like us a little bit different , but back in the day our grandparents canned and had gardens and we are not doing anything different.. Better safe than sorry

Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the thread.