My Take on Prepping

My take on prepping: prepare to change your lifestyle rather than to keep your lifestyle by hoarding. Sooner or later your supplies will run out and

So you should be looking at things like composting toilets, solid fuel heaters/cooking stoves, grain mills, animal pens, soap making boilers, slaughter hammers, butchering knives and saws, smoking ovens, barrels for vinegar (or cider or wine if you're lucky), spades/shovels, seeds, hoes, rakes and so on, spinning wheel, loom. You can prep by keeping your soil healthy and ready for planting. Look out for cheap second hand things like these even if you already have a few or dont intend to learn how to spin yarn, you can trade a spinning wheel with someone who is in to those things for a bag of grain or something (though I suspect cloth is one of the last things to run out).

The reason I wanted to start this as a thread is so you can add your suggestions. Please do.

I'd just helpfully note that there is one thing very very important to include with all you'r talking about. Instructions!

Either by electronic device (old smart phones still work for this ...tablets.. laptops.. etc) or by hard copy. The Internet is knowledge on a scale human kind has never seen before ....and all is gone forever when the power goes out or the connection simply doesn't function. All the wealth of knowledge the world has ....there and then not.

To be honest with you, I wouldn't even know how to make soap if I hadn't gone hunting up the instructions to have with my other things. I've also failed to meet anyone who COULD tell me in a casual conversation how to make even the most basic of soap.

I guess hygiene for the unprepared will be a very ..odorous.. issue and within record time of the last deodorant stocks running out. It's a health issue too, but people get a blank look trying to explain that part entirely too often.

Personally and for the thread here, I've become quite the little archiver with saving things online into PDF format for universal access by almost anything later...and of course saved on physical disk as well as the most important things hard printed.

I can get what you're saying but not everyone here lives in a place where we can get all those things. Preppers in the city can't buy livestock.

Personally and for the thread here, I've become quite the little archiver with saving things online into PDF format for universal access by almost anything later...and of course saved on physical disk as well as the most important things hard printed.

Me too. The internet is a HUGE resource. I've learned, quickly, to:

Garden
Clean my weapons
Design and build a solar power system
Design water catchment.
Know that what the government tells me isn't always true.
Slaughter a chicken.
And much, much more. Too much to list.

Save relevent stuff to pdf, then to a seprate hard drive, your computer, and a flash drive.
And if ita' ont your Kindle reader, back it up to another drive that's not connected to the internet. If its' connected, things can disappear.Don't upload to Kindle Cloud. Connect your Kindle and copy it to your device.

Some folks believe that by reading things, they know how to do them. People sometimes tend to put off preps because they believe they can ramp up their responses when needed. I agree with the OP in the sense that I think true preps involve a lifestyle change -- learning the things you need to and putting them into practice.

Also agree that while storing goods away are better than not storing anything, the better measure of your preparedness is a person's ability to be self-sustaining, and self-protective. Example: A person can store away a #10 can of stabilized open-pollinated seeds against a time when produce is no longer being transported, or ......... a person can store away a #10 can (or two) of seeds AND embark upon growing their own produce.

30 years ago, I lived in a city. I grew up in the country and we were often snowed-in and had to depend upon our own stockpile -- canning, dehydrated foods, fruit/vegetable cellar, etc. When I lived in the city, I grew vegetables in planters. At that time, I was doing a lot of drywall for a living, and the 5-gallon mud buckets were perfect for raising a lot of things, even vining vegetables and fruits.

My darlin' and I have tried to simplify our lives, to live more simply and to produce or forage for as much as we can. We are blessed to have more than two dozen producing coconut palms. From that, we harvest coconut water, make virgin coconut oil, coconut milk, and snack on roasted coconut. It's almost the perfect survival food, but more important, it's a healthy food for ............... living.

I tend to stock up on the things that I can't fabricate. No, I won't perish without toilet paper, but the alternative really changes your day, not to mention requires a person to use more water. I believe potable water is one of the most overlooked factors of long-term post-SitX survival. A good long-term water filter is the Big Berkey (plus back-up filters). Get one. Use it day-to-day. Learn how to safely store water and know that whatever you are able to store is strickly for short-term response.

We've also found it useful to kill our power for a few days as an ongoing test of our abilities to rapidly change and adapt. So far, so good. Stored foods -- FIFO -- First In, First Out, and mark the dates on the storage containers so you can ensure that you're always using the oldest foods. Store stuff that you eat. Learn to can and dehydrate. It's all good. We have the ability to live as our ancestors did, but we lack the desire. We should not loose the ability, and we should not feel completely prepared simply because we've stored away X months worth of food.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Either by electronic device (old smart phones still work for this ...tablets.. laptops.. etc) or by hard copy. The Internet is knowledge on a scale human kind has never seen before ....and all is gone forever when the power goes out or the connection simply doesn't function. All the wealth of knowledge the world has ....there and then not.

That is why I have REAL books,you know,the paper kind made out of trees and some common sense.
Like don't piss in the wind and such.

Originally posted by davjan4

Me too. The internet is a HUGE resource. I've learned, quickly, to:

Garden
Clean my weapons
Design and build a solar power system
Design water catchment.
Know that what the government tells me isn't always true.
Slaughter a chicken.
And much, much more. Too much to list.

Save relevent stuff to pdf, then to a seprate hard drive, your computer, and a flash drive.
And if ita' ont your Kindle reader, back it up to another drive that's not connected to the internet. If its' connected, things can disappear.Don't upload to Kindle Cloud. Connect your Kindle and copy it to your device.

I'm reading your post and finding it sad that that so many need the internet, modern technology, data storing capabilities to 'learn' and share what used to be common knowledge, shared from one person to another and handed down from generation to generation. Good grief, we need books to learn how to grow our own food????? I'll even go out on a limb here and state that mankind in this day and age, in this modern world, is the most vulnerable, the most incapable, the most untrained, the most uneducated in their own wellbeing and taking care of themselves. Considering that man has been around for at least 6-7,000 years, in the last 400 or so, and more so in just the last few decades, they have become weak, unlearned, lazy and incapable. I could let out a whole lot of expletives here but it wouldn't do any good.

I've always had chickens and goats, and kept a small garden. However it wasn't until I really started researching gardening and all it's finer points that I realized just how much science and chemistry is involved, you need to have a certain balance of minerals and such to have optimal plant growth I learned a lot about rotating crops to make the soil better for whatever you plant next. I also have come to realize that people like my mom are prepared in their own way without even realizing it. My mom can knit, crochet, work leather, sew, as a whole bunch of knowledge on plants and their medical uses, while she might not have a huge stockpile of food (they do have some set aside because my dad hunts so they have deer meat and such) she has a lot of skills that could be valuable in a SHTF event with trading services and such.

I think people tend to get caught up with having the newest, coolest gadgets (that they never try to use until the need them) that they forget you don't really need that much to survive if you think in terms of the basics, Water, shelter, food.

reply to post by Gridrebel

I'm reading your post and finding it sad that that so many need the internet, modern technology, data storing capabilities to 'learn' and share what used to be common knowledge, shared from one person to another and handed down from generation to generation. Good grief, we need books to learn how to grow our own food????? I'll even go out on a limb here and state that mankind in this day and age, in this modern world, is the most vulnerable, the most incapable, the most untrained, the most uneducated in their own wellbeing and taking care of themselves. Considering that man has been around for at least 6-7,000 years, in the last 400 or so, and more so in just the last few decades, they have become weak, unlearned, lazy and incapable. I could let out a whole lot of expletives here but it wouldn't do any good.

That was they're whole plan to begin with.

We were doing good til they came out with the internet and smart phones.
Yes,I know,I'm on here now.
But I still hold the knowledge of before than,like an elder.
I think I still have a rain dance or two I remember.

reply to post by davjan4

*Hey all, my bad if my first post read harsh, and it was not intended to. I went and reread that before writing this and really hadn't meant the tone it seems to have in reading vs. writing. I was distracted earlier too with RW while and what I imagine bled over. . No excuse, but explanation.

There is one specific thing that I've really come to collecting that might add to the the ideas on the thread. That is maps. Maps of all kinds. One very real benefit of Obama coming to Office 4 years ago is that the online side has just multiplied and put a ton more than ever before up and easy to get to. That's what makes it priceless. It's almost always packaged in a way to download and use easily with a little looking for a link. It's the one area the tax dollars pay pennies for dollars in value, IMO.

I figure maps are something that would become very valuable in a fairly short time for trading as info everyone would suddenly find necessary. What do the the vast majority of people have for maps? TomToms or something similar and maybe some old paper, folding triple AAA travel maps? Most here probably have more and many I'll bet, much more..What could be more valuable in the long term and after the daily necessities are dealt with for an item in general need though?

Usa.gov is the official USG site and that link is to the top executive agenices. Starting there, you can click down to things like USGS, NOAA and CIA World Fact Book along with everything else.. A number of different places have maps from Topo to all types of filtered terrain displays and water surface/below surface info. Down to the county level. Just about anything one could want.

(What isn't set up for download with links, Uncle still says is free to use if not otherwise noted and is usually very friendly to screen cap. "Fastone Image Viewer" is the public domain image program I use for about 90% of the screen cap graphics I share in posts here. It's clean, simple and works 100%)

I thought of something else to add on this for real and tangible product folks.. Truck stops do sell laminated and spiral bound map books that last forever with basic care and lay flat when open. They also have all kinds of information in the front chapters. Particularly late in the year, all the major name truck stops have these at what was around $30 or so a couple years ago.

(Source)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I still have my old rand mcnally maps and old county maps.
I refused to use the gps stuff until recently.
It's amazing that I managed to cross the country from the east coast to the west coast,finding camp sites and such with out a phone or gps.

No Wrabbit, I dont think it came across as harsh, I got ya. I also keep things in hard copy. I have thought about what would happen if the internet went down or was restricted, I wouldnt know which plant is what half the time. I hope I dont end up eating hemlock thinking it is wild carrot for example.

I'll even go out on a limb here and state that mankind in this day and age, in this modern world, is the most vulnerable, the most incapable, the most untrained, the most uneducated in their own wellbeing and taking care of themselves. Considering that man has been around for at least 6-7,000 years, in the last 400 or so, and more so in just the last few decades, they have become weak, unlearned, lazy and incapable.

And Gridrebel I agree with Kdog (and you maybe?), I believe that the nanny state has been part of thier plan to make us all dependent on them for support, pull the plug on the support and the ones who have been asleep will be lost. I have just perused the page at this stage, but on the Wilderness Survival Net pages that someone linked to in another post, there is one on the psychology of survival Psychology of survival. I think we have become so soft in Western culture that we will find it hard to go without for a few weeks. Things like running water, clean water, sanitation, eating low quality food, not sleeping so well either out of fear or discomfort, the cold, the heat etc. will niggle at you and after a while you start to think "what is the use, they have won, I might as well give in or give up" or you mihgt make rash decisions.

I think you have to have a hope and reason to keep you going, family and faith are the only two things that I can think of would be strong enough to get you through the initial few years. You cannot keep going in a survival sitiuation forever, you have to get to a safe harbour eventually. I am totally against the OWG and one world religion on theological and philosphical grounds. I know that such people in the past have been able to find refuge in wilderness areas. If they come hunting for you then you probably wont be able to resist but I hope this wont be the case (on a large scale) for at least a while, becuase of Revelation 13:16 "The beast forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to have a mark placed on their right hands or on their foreheads. No one could buy or sell without this mark, that is, the beast's name or the number that stands for the name."

Talking about a safe harbour, I think it will be important to be able to get together with like minded individuals and barter. So, like I said in my original post, if you have two or three hand powered grain mills you may be able to trade one for a barrel or something.

Even those who live in the cities can prep by learning skills. Like some have said here, we live in an age where all our knowledge has been stored on the internet. You can trade your skills or knowledge for food and/or protection. You can learn how to make glue. You can learn an instrument, people are going to need to have thier spirits lifted when there is no power at night. Leather tanning, apiary, leather work.

Finally a few more to add to the list: beehives, peddle sewing machines, butter churns.

Originally posted by RN311
My mom can knit, crochet, work leather, sew, as a whole bunch of knowledge on plants and their medical uses, while she might not have a huge stockpile of food (they do have some set aside because my dad hunts so they have deer meat and such) she has a lot of skills that could be valuable in a SHTF event with tradin

This part of your post is exactly what I mean, I bet she didn't read it from the internet! Probably not even a book.

Yes, there is science, but that 'knowledge' was also passed on from one person to the other.

I would like to add the following link about maps. The purpose of the Libre Map Project is to aggregate and make digital maps and related GIS data available for Free. libremap.org... We have only bought one map in the last few years and its a topo of our immediate area that is weatherproof. Hope this link helps.