Mindset Of The Individual

There is a major difference in mind set between survival and prepping.

Survival - as I was experienced in the military and as a Deputy Sheriff is this: Decisions made under stress (Disasters) will change your life and others or end it. Combat taught me that a few times. The military has many courses that teach survival skills and I went through a few of them. Survival is a short term solution.

Prepping - Since 1993 my family started to prepare our-self for the probability that a major disaster would disrupt our life styles for many months to years. It is a mind set with long term solutions.

How will you get ready? Training, learn new skills, experience, communications, and purchase, store, and utilize items to secure your future.

 

I have always struggled with the prepper concept and even now consider myself more of a survivalist than a prepper. I think that it is mostly a matter of perceptions and the crud that the TV has put out there as prepping.

To me, a survivalist concentrated mostly on knowledge and actions while a prepper concentrates mostly on things and accumulating them. I remember when prepping was big and there were shows about preppers. the one that stuck out most in my mind was a woman that had stuffed her basement with gourmet freeze dried foods, canned meats, canned fruits and just endless supplies. She lived in a frame house in suburbia. Now everyone knows where she is and she is bragging that her chubby butt is going to be the best fed prepper out there. Does anybody see anything sort of out of kilter in this or is it just me?

To me the best is a combination of the two philosophies. I think that most of us here fall into that sort of place. I just developed a distaste for the prepper sort of yuppie plan when it was a big thing. By that time I had been seriously involved in the survival movement for many years. The early survival movement was rather militant and was mostly preparations for a revolution type of societal collapse or race war in the US or maybe a nuclear war with the USSR with a "Red Dawn" after war situation.

Even before that though I was raised by a man that had lived through abject poverty and a world war. He insisted that I learn how to live independent of a grocery store if I ever had to. He called it being self-sufficient.

I am prepared to survive. I have been preparing for it my entire life and now know that in the end nobody gets out of this world alive.

 

To survive for a few days doesn't mean you are prepared . A prepper is prepared to make those few days easier . As far as those on here "their prepared " I hope . A serious prepper is probably thinking long term . I agree with Keith "their entertwined " .

 

To me there is a perception of a Survivalist as one who goes out into the wild, and survives with minimal gear using their own skills; foraging; living off the land. Maybe this goes back many years because that is what Survivalists did. The focus seemed to be on bush crafting skills; Mountain Men. I still have that perception today.

A Prepper is someone preparing their family to survive any eventuality life might throw at them. It would be interesting to poll the membership here, and see how many plan to bug in, or stay in place, and how many plan to bug out, and head for the hills. My Plan A is to bug in. There are very few scenarios that would make me leave my home. Almost everything is geared, no pun intended, toward Urban survival. If we had to we could leave and head for the hills. We have a location, and we have the supplies and gear, but that is not our focus. I do agree the two are intertwined, and you need a balance of both.

 

I see the two “disciplines” as one in the same. I see a prepper being more geared towards accumulating the necessary equipment and plans for an impending disaster, depending on their current living situation, while a survivalist is more geared to accumulating the necessary life skills for independent living. The survivalist is simply a more evolved prepper having taken the disaster scenario to its logical conclusion instead of its intermediate shorter term impacts.

 

I dislike the names that are attached to the philosophies. I, theoretically, am "classified" as a bush crafter, a title that was popularised by Ray Mears on his TV shows as he wished to avoid the connotations that (at that time) were being attached to survivalists on the aftermath of Waco, and a series of documentaries on UK TV channels that depicted survivalists as right wing racists and anti Semites.

I understand that people like titles for what they do and, it is reasonable to expect a group of individuals with similar aims to have a generic identity, it just does not appeal to me. If one uses the term "survivalist" in the UK one is quickly linked by people to right wing politics etc.

I find "prepper" a safer, and softer, alternative, but tend not to discuss the philosophies other than amongst my "known prepper" friends with whom my thoughts need no justification or explanation.

The "bushcraft" philosophy tends towards carrying less and has a foraging based edge to it along with a strong sense of self reliance. That'll do for me