Are You A Casual Prepper? If So, What Have You Done So Far?

Honestly, I'm more of a part-time prepper. I can't imagine myself living in the boondocks, living off the grid. I also am hooked to the trappings of modern society.

I need my BigMac! I need internet! I need to watch Game of Thrones!

BUT...I do prep...a little at a time...

I've started making my go bag, reinforcing our house, buying food stocks...

What about you guys?

 

How long have you been living in the bush?

 

Prepping is such a big lifetime change. Some of us need to take baby steps before diving completely in.

 

So, that's about 66 years waiting for the Apocalypse? With all due respect,... ahem...wouldn't your time have been spent on better things?

 

Well, a little at a time.

I've experienced Martial Law, a revolution, several coup de tats, two bombings a few meters from my office, my house has been flooded waist deep twice and hit by near Haiyan strength typhoons several times, I've lived through a severe earthquake, and a massive volcanic eruption.

So, yes, I've gotten a taste of what calamity feels like. I guess I should be grateful I'm still alive!

 

My parents were also from the war. My dad was a guerilla fighting the Japanese. My mother had to watch over my elder siblings as they fled, as the Japanese burned their village. She had to brave the fires and soldiers to gather whatever resources she could get. They hid neck deep swamps as the Japanese searched for them. And when the Japanese soldiers left, they had to subsist on what they could forage.

So yes, my parents were kinda preppers too... because of necessity.

 

Ha, ha, ha, sound crazy doesn't it?

Well, the thing is, our country is really known for having many calamities. We're the second most hit country in the world. And so, I guess in a sense, we were always 'prepared'. It's just that we only prepare optimally. We stock an optimal amount of food if we need to survive for three days. We stock an optimal number of guns and weapons just to scare off potential threats. We take certain precautions like keeping some funds in another country just in case we need to leave our own. We have another house in a farther location just in case our house or neighborhood becomes unliveable.

So, I think so far, my part-time prepping has kept me alive!

But honestly, things are a-changing....and new preparations need to be done...

 

I stock up on stuff quite alot. But not only for when the zombies get here from space but mostly for stuff like snowstorms, long term illness, broken legs, you know, normal stuff. I live very far from any stores or anything. My wife comes from a war torn country so shes been prepping since we came here. Meds and food. A generator is a must when you live here also (if you want power).
I am a HAM operator, wich by some is seen as a prep in itself.

 

I don't consider myself a "doomsday" prepper, but more of a "grandson of the depression era". My grandparents went through the Great Depression, and I learned from them first not to waste and to repair rather than throw away. I remember my grandma and our cook, Maria, always canning and preserving, and "putting by".

So, it just kind of came with growing up living and working on the family ranch. I don't remember ever buying beef, pork, chicken, turkey, veggies, or really much of any food at the store. There were some canned goods that you can't raise in AZ, but for the most part everything came from the ranch, Grandma's garden, and via trading beef with the pig farmer down the road and at the Presott Farmer's Market.

Then, when I left to go to college in Tucson...it was a whole new world in a lot of ways. Then, I got married, went to the academy, had my son and I became a "consumer". My wife was a city girl, had no idea how to do anything when we went home to Prescott...it was culture shock for her like it was for me going to the city.

Anyway, my first wife passed away when my son was only 2. I was left with a kid, a mortgage, and really scraping by on overtime, moonlight jobs, and buying and selling guns, doing gunsmith work...you name it.

Then, 15 years ago I got remarried. My wife, who was raised dirt poor, was in her surgical internship at a university hospital. She made less than minimum wage...but in the years I had been a single dad I started buying food at warehouse stores, growing a small garden, learning to do canning by myself. Obviously, I never ran short of beef, pork, or chicken because Grandma and Pap saw that I was well set there. The thing I realized is that I had become a prepper "against hard times".

After my wife finished her internship and began her surgical residency things eased up a little but I still kept up with the bargain hunting, shopping, buying, selling, trading, etc. I became friendly with some LDS neighbors who followed the 2 year supply of everything model of their faith (No, I am not LDS), but I learned a lot from them.

Fast forward six years, and my wife had completed her residency and surgical fellowship (she's a trauma surgeon), and things eased up considerably. We found 100 acres out here about five miles from the middle of nowhere with good features and a few government surplus surprises and built the house we wanted. We did solar, (I have been experimenting to varying degrees of success with wind...I can make toast via wind power...lol), but I was able to financially support a lifestyle where I can take advantage of deals on long term storage foods, military MREs in bulk, et cetera.

So...hell...I guess I am not a casual prepper, but I have been fortunate enough to be able to purchase most of the preps we have in place. BUT...those things I can do here on this property I have done. I have sunk 2 wells with wind pumps, identified other water sources, improved the government surplus surprise into something useful, and worked hard to make our home as independent from the power grid as possible. We are connected, but if we come to a time when we're not...we will be okay. We will simply move to the basement.

My skills though are more of a LE nature. I am an armorer, reloader, extremely active competitive shooter and trainer.

 

Honestly I'm not sure that I'm really a prepper at all in the roughest sense of the word. Basically I was raised with the attitude that part of being a man was to always be able to take care of my loved ones. My Dad was big on this and wanted me to be familiar with the old ways of doing things. He often told me that you didn't want to be totally dependent on electricity or modern conveniences because they can fail you.

We always have had our hurricane gear and plenty of food ready to go. In the early 70s I actually thought that we were going to have a civil war and got involved with a militia of sorts. That got me interested in guns past just a few for hunting. I eventually went into business with a couple of partners and got a FFL and sold guns for a number of years. I also did a lot of gunsmith work.

As time passed I guess I just considered having a lot of food in the house and learning how to do everything for myself was just the way I lived. I'm lucky in that I can learn things pretty easily. Eventually this led to me having my own business fixing things. I can fix nearly anything that is in a home, restaurant, motel, machine shop or factory plus have worked as a diesel and gasoline car mechanic. I've built houses, poured and repaired slabs for homes and am a master machinist able to draw the prints pick the metal and carry it through all the way to completion on any machine in any shop.

I have "kits" in every vehicle incase something happens when I'm away from home and my place is made up of two houses, three separate shops and two two car carports that are work sheds. One is a machine type shop with a metal lathe, milling machine, drill press, table saw, bandsaw, planer, compound slide miter saw, Wood lathe, router table, belt sanders and grinders. I also have a stick welder, tig welder and an oxy acetylene rigs in this shop. It also has a huge Kennedy roll around with a box, sub box and side box full of my mechanic and machinist tools and instruments.

The second shop is set up for reloading, fly tying, leather work, wood carving, knife making and fishing stuff. The third shop is mostly my wifes craft shop with a drill press, chop saw, scroll saw and painting stuff. and stuff for refinishing furniture.

I have tried to gather as many of the old tools as possible that are not dependent on power. I do these things because I like to make things and I like being self sufficient. I've always been this way. I'm a Texan and we are a pretty hardy lot and a lot of this is sort of normal for a lot of us.

 

One can be prepared for calamitys and still live your life but you do need to ask your self if you have the resolve to abandon what your comfortable with in order for you and your loved ones too survive.
As for me I too love in a city and I understand that the luxury of such a life can be hard to let go (I enjoy my ps4 and my netflix) but I am prepared and willing to leave it and live with out it if need be.
I haven't experienced all of what you all may have but the value of being ready for as much as you can be and not need it is better than not having anything and needing it.
I also prepare for simple things like week long power outages and the like by stocking bottled water, preserved food, a small cooker that dosen't need power or fuel, flashlights and warm clothing all of these thing can be useful for any situation. And you can even buy small magnetic generator that can charge your phone. You don't have to give up your lifestyle at the first sign of trouble but you should be ready too.
By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail. Benjamin Franklin.
You don't have to live in the woods but keeping a bottle of water and a few granola bars in your fridge doesn't count as being prepared in any way if that's all you have for your plans I implore you too take extra steps and ask your self what is really important your comfortable lifestyle or your and your loved ones life?.
Trust me it can be easier then you think to be ready there are plenty of options out there too prepare.
Good health and best of luck.

 

It's good just to have it out there

 

I'm no SuperPrepperSurvivalistNinja™, but I wouldn't say I am a casual prepper...

 

I think the reason that I have never cared for the term "prepper" is that it seems to infer a sort of obsessive and fearful way of living. I just don't look at what I do that way and if it wasn't mostly a pleasure I would have probably stopped doing most of the things that I do a long time ago. I don't think Kieth is living in the bush because he is afraid. I bet he is there because he loves it and the special closeness you get when you live WITH nature instead of trying to terraform it into a place that you just live IN. I like having wild life around me. It isn't always convenient. Going to get pizza is a 40 mile round trip to town and delivery is just not going to happen.

Each person has their own priorities, needs and wants. Big houses, new fancy cars and trucks and the big city lifestyle are not on my list of important things. For me the things that others call prepping is for me, just the way I like to live. I like to hunt, fish and camp. I like to have a lot of food on hand just incase and always have been this way. I like guns, knives, swords axes and tools. I like making things with my hands and would rather repair and fix up an older then than buy new ones.

If it isn't fun you need to reevaluate what you are doing. I learned from watching others that prepping for a possible tomorrow is useless if you don't enjoy today. My Dad worked hard all his life with the intention of being able to retire and enjoy himself later in life. You might say he prepped for retirement. Instead he got parkinson's and died.

If I live to see the end of this world I am pretty ready to live through it and come out the other side alive and happy. If on the other hand I die tomorrow I have no regrets and have had a great time doing the things that gave me pleasure. Prepping for the future should not be such an obsession that it makes you unhappy now. Now is all that you are sure of having. Enjoy today so that if your preparations for tomorrow don't go as you planned you still have no regrets.

 

I think we all need a dam good plan for when shth. We can't put our heads in the sand and hope it doesn't happen to us. I enjoy preparing my home, bags and vehicalsMy wife and I work side by side doing our planning. We both had to work hard and we tried to save for retirement. I had to retire because of heart problems and now I'am on disability. I sure am not proud of that fact. My wife is now retired. We tried to keep health insurance on my wife the price went from 400 to $900 amonth so we had to drop her insurance. Yes life can through you a curve ball at anytime. Our retired life is not what we had planned but we have each other and to me the wife is the most important person to me even after 44 years together! So through anything you want at us and we will whip its ass. thank you for letting me vent Jr Brown Chief

 

Here's the deal. Many are not prepared and may not even have the mentality for it, yet they could be allies with us in the realm of wishing for a better future, a non-communist future, a future to include Liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.

I'd hate to see these folks get wiped-out at the very onset. Maybe there are some decent humans among the cattle.

What can the unprepared do to not get ground-up on week number two?! My goal here is to give ideas for simple get-by-for-a-while prep.s, not serious prep.s. Could be adequate, could be a waste, who knows. What I do know for sure is that I can't/won't be there for these people. I'm thinking, "Here's you a list, hope you have some skills, go with God! When it goes bad, don't come knocking on my door."

Let's say they have some disposable wealth. They can go to an outdoors shop plus a hardware store and buy:

1. A very good ceramic filter to get out the worst bacteria and cysts, plus charcoal filers to try to get the bad aromas down. Storage barrels 15 - 20 gallon.

2. Batteries and flashlights. Candles and kerosene lamps. Clean kerosene.

3. Trail stove and utensils for such. They can prep their fireplace or better yet, a woodstove.

4. Whatever they can afford in canned meat/fish, plus canned veggies. Buy some bags of rice weighing over 20lb.s each (10 kilo). "Bags" as in plural. Buy a case of cooking oil. Buy sugar and salt and Kool-Aid and candy for the kids.

5. Buy a shotgun and as much ammo as affordable. Birdshot for hunting. Buckshot and slugs for "human" aggressors.

6. An electrical generator.

7. Hopefully they've got a toolbox and standard tools. They'll need plywood and some lumber. They'll need multiple rolls, LARGE rolls, of plastic of thick gauge / mil.s. Barriers will need to be built. Roofs will need repair. Buy a couple of rain barrels. Think jerry rigging. Buy couplers such as nails and deck screws. Stone blocks, cinder blocks, sand. If someone lives in a suburb, let's face it, they are gonna get stuck there -- bug-out plan or not. Think about windows and doors being smashed. Even after having shot the "people" responsible, you gotta re-seal your house / perimeter. Wrecking bar(s), sledge hammer, shovels, picks, mattock. Garden hoses.

8. Rope, several 50-100ft lengths. Pulleys, hooks, carabiners, that stuff. Tarps would come in handy for several needs.

9. Fire starters and fuel. Fire extinguishers. You could accidentally start a fire, or looters could intentionally try to burn you out.

10. Insulated clothing, boots, socks, and wool caps.


I could go on and on. This list simply lept out of my head. I'll let others add to the list. I gotta get to bed now. Bad weather. Gotta get wife to snowy/icy destination tomorrow morning. Really looking forward to that. I'd like another bourbon, but so it goes.

 

We are starting from scratch. Getting away from the city, aiming for more sustainability. Have a long way to go but got to start somewhere. I hate being dependent on a grocery store for our food, so that is one goal. I live in tornado alley, so my preps will start with that in mind. We also have power outages so will prep for those things. After these things are done, will be going further in prepping.

First things first, though, we got to get moved. It's soooo slow going. So many things to do with limited funds. If shtf tomorrow, we are screwed. Best time to plant a tree is yesterday, right? Well, have the land, got a house moved out there, have water, I guess our 'tree' is planted. Now just trying to move forward. For what we have done so far I don't know if that is 'casual' or not, with so much still do get done, but it is a start.

 

I don't know any real preppers that didn't start from scratch and build from there ,it's just some have prepped farther than others . Age has a lot to do with that , some have been at it longer than others ,also some take it more seriously than others . I to moved from an undesirable location to my present retreat ,that was an excellent decision on my part .

 

The level of effort that you will need to make is varied by where you live and plan to bug out too and your particular set of REAL skills and Knowledge. Actually where I live you don't have to prepare to the level that you might need to survive in other places.

I can't imagine ever being hungry here. I will eat almost anything and due to our warm wet environment that means there is a lot out there for me. Because it is a relatively mild environment though I will have a lot more useless dead people walking that I am going to have to defend myself from and protect my property from.

People in the north are gong to have a lot more trouble surviving their environment in the winter. On the good side for them most of the city people are going to freeze to death that first winter. If to fall happened in the winter many won't live a week.

Where I need strong defensive preparations I don't need huge stores of food or wood for heat. We are having a massively cold period here right now. It is going to be in the upper 20s f tonight and probably won't get much over 60 f tomorrow. If it got almost arctic it might make it into the teens and then only warm up to the mid 40s the next day. All I really need is a camp fire and I'm good. No snow ever and most winter days run from the 40s at night to the high 60s in the day. I can hit as high as the 90s 365 days a year though.

Those of you in the north need to make serious plans on staying warm. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand. A fireplace in your house won't get it done. The amount of wood that you would need to heat a house around the clock would be insupportable. Fireplaces are for looking at rather than actually warming a house. More heat goes up the chimney than into the house.

Houses are too big. What you will need is a much smaller area to heat and a heating system that is a lot more efficient than a fireplace. I have no doubt that those of you that live up there know more about this than I do but you really need to have your plans set. don't think that you can depend on a chain saw. You need tools that are more dependable and some of those tools are harder to find than they used to be. A one and two man crosscut saw will be priceless. A good set of axes, wedges, mauls and adzes will be life savers. When everyone is trying to burn wood to survive it is going to get hard to find in a hurry. Cutting wood that is on property that you don't control may be dangerous.

Go and look at history books with pictures of the old cities and home places. They were pretty barren. Even where I live where it is heavily forested now the pictures from the turn of the last century show bare parries and empty rolling hills. As more and more people would settle into an area you had to go farther and farther away to find firewood. They had horses and wagons what will you have to carry your wood after a few years?

Those of you that live in the north please tell us your plans. I know that I am ignorant and in this my knowledge is all from reading not living. I want to hear what you plan to do.

 

I live in NW Kansas. It’s not “The North” but it gets below zero every winter. I have wondered about how I can keep my family warm in that situation. It is something I really need to find a solution for.

 

I think that the best bet for people in places where it gets seriously cold will be to basically have "winter quarters" and "summer quarters". I know that even though we don't have that kind of winters, the needs in the winter and the needs in the summer are just very different in a world without power.

Winter quarters needs to be small with thick walls and a good wood burning heater that is set up to burn outside air and not send the heat up and out the chimney. A good sealed system like this is VERY efficient and that means you spend less time cutting and splitting wood. Make it so that the base foot print is as small as is reasonable and then has sleeping lofts. Heat rises so those will be nice and warm for sleeping.

The summer quarters are almost exactly the opposite. You want shade but not enclosed. You might seriously consider having your kitchen built separately from your quarters. That will make your living area cooler and if the kitchen burns down you don't lose everything.

The compromise that was used down here was what we call a dog trot house. That is a house with a huge open hall running right down through the middle of the house. On one side of the "trot you have a living room and kitchen and on the other side you had two bedrooms. In the summer you lived in the open part in the middle and then in the winter you lived in the rooms. When it got real cold you all moved into one side and camped out in the living room and kitchen.

Often the hall through the middle was bigger than the two sets of rooms. In a farm or rural place you live outside except on the coldest days. My grandmothers house was like this and during the winter they closed up the ends of the trot. Originally it was a dirt floor and if it got bitterly cold they moved the smaller critters in there rather than having to go outside to tend to them.

 

I have never been to north west Kansas but here the terrain is flat . If you are fortunate enough to have a hill on your property you may be able to immolate a survival technique utilized by southern troops during the civil war , may have been used by northern troops . when winter caught them far from home they would disperse into small groups go to a hidden isolated location and dig a dug out into a hillside ,cover the top with whatever available , then pile dirt over the top of that , creating a small underground shelter . with a small wood type heater installed you should stay plenty warm .

 

If you only have a fireplace, there's some things you can do.
First of course is to check your budget and see if you can afford a wood stove insert.
You can buy pipes that hold the firewood and these pipes can get glowing hot. These however require a fan to blow the air through the pipes and out into the room. So when without electricity; you gotta use bellows. Such fans don't suck much juice, so you could constantly charge lead-acid batteries; then when the power goes off, the batteries run the fan via an inverter. Room starts getting cold, enable the batteries. Simple convection causes some air to be moved through the pipes -- you don't have to do anything.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fireplace+tubes&t=h_&atb=v140-1__&iax=images&ia=images

https://www.thegreenhead.com/2009/01/spitfire-tube-fireplace-heaters.php

One thing you absolutely MUST do with fireplaces is to provide outside air to the fire and NOT let the fire to suck the air out of your house. We had a mason repair the fireplace in this house. We also had him drill a 3" diameter hole through the back of the fireplace to outside. There's a sliding metal "door" inside the fireplace that allows me to regulate how much air comes into the fireplace -- this can be closed or wide open or anywhere inbetween. The mason drilled through firebrick and two feet of bricks/masonry to achieve this -- has to be done. This fellow is no ordinary mason, he does custom work to include chimneys. Maybe you could rig a mettle pipe to go outside for your fire's input air.

We had our mason install an 18" iron arm that can swing a heavy pot over the fire -- just like our ancestors used. If you open the front of the fireplace (say you have a pretty enclosure, ours has louvered doors (brass and glass) the radiant heat will toast things within 4 ft. I've got an iron grill that fits back into the fireplace and cook hotdogs and hamburgers like we were out picnicking. This is what we have:

https://barbecuebible.com/2017/03/24/lodge-sportsman-hibachi-grill/






The above fireplace looks very much like ours. Ours has a fancy brass front enclosure. Our fireplace tools are heavy-duty -- don't get the silly tools that are just for show. I couldn't find a photograph of tools as heavy/thick/tall as ours.

When I was a boy, it was my job to shovel coal into our furnace hopper. During winter, I'd get home and build a coal fire in my grandpa's den. I'd curl up in front of it and nap before supper. Too, I had to thaw out my feet. Hiking home from school means your hands and feet go numb.