(Why I prep, and how I do so in a family that thinks I’m crazy.)
In the summer of 1977 my mother dragged me to see my older brother’s Cub Scouts meeting. I was closing in on my sixth birthday and she informed me in no uncertain terms that I would be joining. My mother was one of the multitudes of single mom’s in my part of Brooklyn. A neighborhood where at the time crime was high, money was tight, and involved dads were few. The only place for many boys to find any kind of positive male role model was in Scouting. So off to the basement of the local savings bank I went, passing along the way many other kids whose parents weren’t making them go off somewhere that required stuffy uniforms on humid July evenings.
Shortly after arriving, “Signs Up” was called and the scouts were ordered into their Dens so the meeting could open with The Pledge of Allegiance. When that was done and all outstanding business concluded I watched in absolute amazement as the older boys (the Webelos) proceeded to learn how to treat shock and minor wounds on one side of the large room while the younger boys (Cubs) were learning how to lash branches together to build a tripod for use as a camp table complete with seats. Those relatively simple things spoke to me on a level I still can’t comprehend. I was “all-in” right then and there.
From that night until I turned six I was at every meeting. I became a mascot of sorts, treated as a member of the team but not quite in the game. It was a big deal for me when I was finally able to wear the uniform. At the time (I believe it has changed now) the neckerchief had a picture of a bear cub and the logo: “Be Prepared”. Words that still echo in my mind and a philosophy that continues to permeate everything I do.
The Modern World:
So here I am: A full grown man, husband and father both, having grown up hearing some variation of “Be Prepared” on a regular basis… “Make sure you have a dime for the pay-phone”, “Make sure you have extra pencils for your test”, and “Make sure you check your engine fluids before you drive that far”. The list of recommendations of how and why to be prepared just keeps going and going.
In a modern world a fully charged cell phone has replaced the dime for the pay phone, but otherwise little has changed with regards to what we tell our children on a daily basis. So you can imagine my surprise when upon building an emergency kit some year’s back, my wife looked at me with “that look”.
You know the one you get… it sort of says: “Poor fool just doesn’t know any better”, the visual equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. I guess I just didn’t realize that being prepared was somehow strange. So my wife and I proceeded to have a conversation where on one side was the feeling that you can’t ever be too careful (especially in light of how many times we lose power in Upstate N.Y.), and on the other the assertion that I’m paranoid; backed up with the ever so logical “what will the neighbors think?” I was astonished.
Having grown up about five cents below the poverty line and being raised with Scouting at my side, I had learned to always hedge my proverbial bets. To find out that according to the people who loved me preparedness was considered crazy… that most people truly believe the government can and will take care of them in a crisis… just confounds me.
Had these people not been watching the same news I had? Do they not remember any of the natural disasters over the last ten years? Katrina, Irene or Sandy anyone? Were all of my tidbits of wisdom thrown out like the mornings coffee grinds?
After several discussions about the topic of preparedness I realized I was alone. I would not receive any assistance in gathering, organizing, storing or in any other way getting my stuff together for an emergency of any kind let alone for TEOTWAWKI.
I had no choice but to become: “The Secret Prepper.” (Cue ominous music.)
Logistics of a dual identity:
Deciding on where to begin is kind of like being an eight-year-old with a $100 bill in a candy store: Overwhelming in its possibilities. So in looking at the logistics of fulfilling the requirements of my shadow-self, I decided to create 3 basic (but in retrospect woefully inadequate) categories to manage the tasks:
- How to pay for it?
- What to get and where to get it?
- How and where to store it?
The most difficult of these three options, for me, was how to pay for it. Having a stay at home parent raising a child, in my humble opinion, far outweighs the negative financial effect resulting from only one income. The problem I came across is that my wife wears so many hats. I make the money, take care of the yard, kill the bugs and protect us from things that go bump in the night while she does pretty much everything else. This includes balancing the checkbook. (Remember, she’s not on-board because I’m nuts.)
How was “The Secret Prepper” to accomplish any of his preparedness goals while not tipping his hand to the one-woman oversight committee that thinks he’s insane? Not to mention maintaining Operational Security (I will make references to where I adhered strictly to OPSEC.) Over time it became a game to me.
Getting ready for the Schumer on the cheap:
Finances came from good old-fashioned sacrifice. I’ve found that when money is tight you have an obligation to stick to what you feel in your gut is important. As such, sacrifice is an imperative. At that time, when all was said and done I could allot myself $25 each Friday for the following week. This money was to pay for my lunch, coffee or anything else I wanted while I was at work.
I realize this doesn’t sound like a significant amount of money, but once you learn how to squeeze blood from a stone you’d be surprised how much those suckers can bleed. So I thought back to my childhood and how my mother managed to feed us and came up with some practical solutions as well as some that were foreign to me.
Two things that I did were start a vegetable garden and learn how to jar/can. This was a completely foreign world to me. Growing up in an apartment building, the only reason I wanted a good-sized property hours from the city was to get away from people. I didn’t realize what could be done until I bought a homesteading book. The amount of money I now save on produce is astonishing. This has served to help my entire household and not just “The Secret Prepper”.
Otherwise, I spent the first few weeks stocking surplus goods in my locker at work. Nothing too big mind you, just the basics for the purposes of masking my future purchases. Ferreting away an excess item from home here and there and bringing it to work, I managed to stash several days lunch in my locker and needed less money the following week. My surplus cash went into an envelope there as well. I made it a point to only use cash so as not to create any kind of a paper trail (OPSEC). It was good practice for my later and larger purchases.
I soon had a sizeable bankroll and a grocery store in my locker with none the wiser. Some of this food was moved to buckets in the basement and some was consumed for lunch but all of it served to free up $100 a month in cash. This process took several weeks but once I had it down to a science there was no stopping it.
Saving about $100 a month, I was able to start prioritizing the next objective: What to get and where to get it?
I decided on what my most immediate need would be in the event of the most likely emergency in my area: Nature’s fury and her prolonged power outages. So with that particular goal in mind, and the knowledge that needs are similar in many emergencies, I proceeded to spend my hard saved money. Candles, matches, water purification tablets/canteens, solar blankets, first-aid kit, tent and sleeping bags, walkie-talkie’s, batteries, MREs. Thus, all of the basics.
My cup runneth over:
Pretty soon my work locker, my car and my super-secret-hidey-hole were near to bursting at the seams. It was time to consider task three: How and where to store it? The problem was, I was still working on what to get. It became clear to me that a two-pronged approach was in order.
I went to a “mom-and-pop” hardware store in the next town and bought two footlockers, paying in cash (OPSEC), making sure that they could fit into the trunk of my car in case I had to bug out rather than in. One I labeled camping gear and proceeded to fill it with pretty much anything that fit the bill, storing it where I keep all of the other things my family has no interest in. The other one I left unlabeled and filled with surplus goods. I added to them some large desiccant packs that I got for free at a piano store and hid the unlabeled one in a dark corner among the spiders.
With room at my outside locations freed up, I went back to my list of necessities. After buying and waylaying various supplies, I started looking into the next phase of purchase and storage: Mylar.
Nowadays there are a lot of good videos on YouTube about the use of Mylar bags. Not so just a few years back. I’ll tell you what I believe to be the most important piece of information I learned about Mylar bags after I had started using them. I have decided (once again my humble opinion) that I prefer to fill smaller bags. I can then use these bags to create a variety of items in a single storage bucket. If I had to grab just a few buckets and bug due to an emergency I won’t have to think about which ones to grab. Each has a little of everything. But I’m getting way ahead of myself…
I bought some 5-Gallon 5mil Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers through a dummy persona from an Internet retailer that accepted money orders (OPSEC). Then, to save money I went to a bunch of grocery stores out-of-town (OPSEC) and basically trash-picked or asked for some food-grade buckets. When I had a good bucket to Mylar ratio I proceeded to fill my dried stores.
Filling Mylar bags is a simple thing to do. It’s pretty much a 3-step process:
1. Put bag in bucket and fill with dry goods.
2. Add Oxygen Absorbers. I use 300 to 500cc absorbers per pound depending on how much “dead air” is left in the bag. For instance ziti leaves more air than rice.
3. Fold the bag over, squeezing all of the air out and run a hot iron across the open end to create a seal. I usually iron the outermost part of the bag, near the opening, and an extra two inches to create a bigger seal. By leaving a lot of the bag below the seal you can re-use it.
My dried stores consisted of what you’d expect: Beans, rice, pasta and various grains totaling a paltry five buckets-worth. To supplement them I proceeded to add cans of various meats like tuna, sardines and the like. Anything with a shelf life extending out for a few years that I could and would eat over time was collected and stored away. After a while my secret stash, which was in plain sight, was becoming noticeable (definitely not OPSEC).
It was about then that I read on a blog about how a couple in Manhattan with a considerable shortage of space managed their preparedness needs.
While I couldn’t follow their example strictly I did learn a lot from it. Here are three examples of what I did with this wisdom:
- I made a workbench using stacked buckets for the legs and camouflaged it on three sides with storage shelves. (They had made a kitchen table camouflaged with a table cloth,)
- I stored food in Mylar bags under (my side) of the bed in those under-the-bed storage containers, surrounding them with out-of-season clothes.
- Started using 1-gallon Mylar bags to fit a greater variety of items per bucket.
Now it bears note that following number three is a less efficient use of food-space. When you seal the items this way and put them into a bucket there is a lot of dead space between the bags. What I do with those spaces now is add things like: ammo, toilet paper, water filters/tablets, basic first aid supplies and pretty much anything else I can cram in there. [JWR Adds: Never include anything on a food container that might exude toxic vapors such as lubricants, paint, Sterno, cans of lighter fluid, hexamine tabs, or Trioxane fuel bars.] So long as I can lift and carry them without straining myself I fill the buckets as much as I can.
Now, instead of having to open a 5-gallon bucket of rice and risk spoilage, I can open smaller amounts as needed and preserve freshness to greater quantities of supplies. Plus, I have the added benefit of knowing that a single bucket is roughly equal to a full month of a majority of my supplies. I’ll delve into this momentarily as I know it sounds like a ridiculous estimate. Just bear with me.
Hiding in plain sight:
Over time my stores grew and my available space was shrinking. I needed to find a new way to hide my stores in plain sight. One of the way’s I’ve done this is to put storage buckets next to the items they resemble. What I mean by this is that I have a bucket with a re-used label stating “Activated Carbon” next to my house’s water filter. I have a bucket with a manufacturer painted fertilizer label on it among my garden supplies. The variety of things that now require buckets for “organization” in my house is amazing.
All of my buckets have been cleaned and sterilized, and the use of Mylar goes further to ensure the supplies are safe. Plus, the buckets are among the items they are pretending to be. This adds a level of camouflage that I otherwise wouldn’t have achieved (OPSEC). If you think about it, you can find many different ways to not-camouflage your hidden stuff.
Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat:
So now that I have some experience in this, what do I fit in my magical, invisible buckets? I’m glad you asked. It takes some creative packing but here’s a typical inventory:
-8 Lbs Rice
-5 Lbs Beans
-5 Lbs Pasta
-5 Lbs TVP (taco, beef or chicken chunk)
-1 cup Sugar
-1 cup Salt
-1 cup Italian Seasoning
-100 rounds .22 Long (for small game or ballistic wampum)
-4 Bottles of Water Purification Tablets in a wide mouth quart jug (totals 50 quarts)
-25 each of Chicken and Beef Bullion Cubes (also in the quart jug)
-1 roll of compressed/vacuum sealed toilet paper (cardboard removed)
-50 (ish) compressed/vacuum sealed napkins (can double as kindling after use)
-200 strike anywhere matches in a sealed plastic tube
-2 solar accent lights removed from their stakes
-Whatever first-aid supplies I can get in
Coupled with my jarred stores, garden and chickens (see below), these supplemental items should do just fine. And if something should go wrong what buckets I may need to bring should I have to evacuate/bug out will still have a solid variety of supplies.
Subterranean Supermarket
I will touch briefly on canned goods. We can all agree on the fact that they last a long while and offer up a variety of ways to supplement protein and calories as well as ways to avoid Food Fatigue.
Food Fatigue is basically getting so sick and tired of eating the same things repeatedly over a long period of time that you slowly starve yourself because you choose not to eat them anymore. Please feel free to look up a literal definition.
Setting up a rotational stock system should be high on your list. Canned goods must be stored in such a way that they can be rotated with every purchase. Optimally you can set up a shelf that lets you put new stuff directly in back and allows you to easily take from the front.
Just imagine that the Schumer has hit the Fan. You’ve used everything in your refrigerator first and now are going to your stores. You open up a can of tuna and it just doesn’t smell right. So you open another… same thing. As the fear sets in you realize your mistake. The best way to avoid this is to rotate your stock and stay on top of it.
Rule of thumb: One in, one out. [Quickly replace everything you use, and use your oldest stocks first.]
Other things you need to keep along with your canned/jarred stores are:
- Bleach: You can’t beat it for keeping things sanitary, especially if you have a designated area for butchering game. It can also be used for treating water, but I’m not entirely comfy with that.
- Vinegar: It’s a great non-chemical cleaner that can be used where food is prepared/consumed. You’ll also need it for jarring foods, post-SHTF. Store different types of vinegar. White for cleaning/jarring, apple cider for poultices or treatment for conditions like Gout.
- Alcohol: The drinking kind. I do not partake often, but if there is any kind of prolonged crisis you may need it for tincturing medicines. It’s also a great barter item. Make sure you have vodka and high proof rum.
An old dog learns new tricks:
So to address the obvious shortcomings in my monthly supply estimate, I did after all say it was a rough estimate, I had to learn a few new skills. Under the guise of boredom (OPSEC) I decided that I wanted to enter the magical world of keeping chickens. I had to think long and hard about this one. There are a lot of reasons not to do this. Among them are:
- Chicken coops require maintenance. If you can’t keep up on things you have no place having them, especially when it comes to living creatures. They may only be chickens, but their still Gods creatures.
- Space is a factor. If you have a rooster and your neighbors are as little as an acre away, you won’t be friends for long.
- Town ordinances.
- My limited experience with animals of any nature.
If you look on YouTube there are a lot of instructional videos dealing with coop construction. I strongly recommend watching them. Also, though my acreage is small I’m surrounded on three sides by state land. As for town ordinance, the clerk told me that, though illegal, if there were no noise complaints from my nearest neighbor then there weren’t any chickens in existence on my property.
After about six months, I decided that all was well on the chicken keeping front. The next thing I had to learn was how to jar and can the produce from my ever-expanding garden.
I firmly believe that it is my duty not just as a Christian, but also as a human being, to give charitably whenever possible. I have found that a garden can go long ways towards helping others when needs are great. As unemployment in my area exceeds 15% at the time of typing this, I am finding more and more people within five miles of my home who are in need of food assistance than I ever though I would see. Having gone to bed hungry many times as a child I find this to be an affront to my very existence.
As such I keep producing as much as possible. Along with this, I have found that it has become a simple matter to jar foods like pickles, salsa, tomato sauce, chutney and bean salad. I give my surplus to the food pantry run by my church versus direct giving (OPSEC) and I’ve managed to streamline my process and make better quality stores for myself. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve always believed that you learn best by doing.
The best offense is a good defense:
I’ve now spent the last couple of years secretly creating my cache of supplies. While doing so I’ve come across a like-minded individual who brought me to my current phase of preparedness: Security and Defense.
I had come to realize that there is a giant hole in all of my preparation. I did not have the ability to defend it. I have a fairly decent ability to fight hand-to-hand and with knives. I honed this ability growing up in a rough neighborhood. My biggest problem was that I didn’t want to end up being the fool who died because he brought a knife to a gunfight.
To that end I sought to get my pistol permit. During my journey to permit-hood I met a firearms instructor who, as it turns out, lives not too far from my home. My gut told me we were kindred. After my class we got to talking and our belief systems seemed to be in sync. So I decided to break operational security and divulge my preparedness. I have not had a single regret about it yet.
My newly discovered partner-in-preparedness is a retired SWAT-experienced police officer. He has helped several people on the road to “Emergency Security” and has decided to not only teach this to me, but to train with me. I have been introduced to the world of the “three gun” philosophy and am currently taking steps to hone my skills along with others like me.
A man’s home is his castle:
When it comes to home defense, it’s not enough to just know how to shoot. I had heard numerous times about “Hardening your home”. Hardening, in general, is a very simple concept: Don’t make it easy for the bad guys to get in and win. Use things like thorny plants below but not overgrowing your windows, security system, motion lights etc. But what about when the Schumer hits the fan?
These basic precautions would likely not be enough to fend of a few hungry people let alone stand up to a full-on assault by looters. With that in mind I spent a good amount of time walking the perimeter of my property looking for places where my property, as well as my home, could be compromised or used against me.
My property, which borders hundreds of acres of state land, is heavily wooded. I don’t expect to be set-upon by a fast moving vehicle based force from any of the sides facing forest. Any approach on foot from these directions would have plenty of cover, but only after traversing 12 acres of swamp on one side, and hundreds of densely forested acres on the others. I have made good use of a chainsaw and thinned out the woods for a hundred feet in each direction past my property line. This wood will do a lot of good in my fireplace.
Additionally, I have taken the liberty of re-populating the now thinned areas with low growing vines for ground cover. These will serve to entangle all but the most dexterous foot thus slowing any approach, and even offering up targets should they get stuck on approach.
With three of four areas of approach taken care of I then needed to contend with my homes three weakest points.
- My proximity to the road.
- The gaping hole in my home created by my glass deck doors.
- The gaping hole in my home created by the Bay Window facing the road.
There isn’t much I can do about how close to the road my home is. Here are a few solutions I have applied or am in the process of at the time of typing:
- The digging of a “Water Run-off” ditch along my road frontage will do considerable damage to smaller vehicles.
- A six-foot privacy fence, using concrete in the pillars running the length of my property. On the “Yard Side” of the fence, concrete “Planters” with decorative brick facing have been added at intervals that will make it impossible for anything to drive between (should my fence be rammed). Plus they look nice and are the future home for my medicinal herb garden.
- My glass doors will be removed when SHTF. To take their place I have constructed a ballistic and fire resistant blockade that I refer to as “The Portcullis”, though it doesn’t really look like one.
Building The Portcullis
2×8 pressure treated lumber was used to frame out the door opening. The framing was done in such a way as to allow for the installation of a steel fire door in the center. The outside of the structure will be closed around the door by screwing plywood to the framing and allowing it to overlap the house by one foot in all directions.
This plywood is then covered with sheet metal, which when needed for actual use will be coated in barbecue paint. The whole effect, with the steel fire door installed, is to create a standard door opening that offers protection from nasty things like Molotov cocktails and bullets.
The additional ballistic protection comes from gravel. Once the outside of The Portcullis is installed, the inside will go up in sections. The bottom four feet will be covered with plywood. At which time gravel, cleverly disguised as additional parking on the side of my driveway (OPSEC), will be used to fill in the space between the outer and inner plywood.
When I reach the top of the first section, three additional feet will be added in the same manner. The final foot will be filled this way but with a bit more difficulty as there is little room remaining for the shovels of gravel to be manipulated.
The final product results in excellent ballistic and flame protection. The same process will be used for the Bay Window with the addition of two gun ports.
The beauty of this assembly is that all of the parts can be stored unassumingly in my basement, shed or anywhere else such things seem ordinary (OPSEC).
It all comes full circle:
As I type this I am still living this secret life. I have learned how to raise chickens, grow crops, jar and can, purify drinking water, store food, use multiple weapons and harden my home. I am surveying my land for an area suitable for fuel storage and I have even signed up to take “classes” on battlefield medicine. But I have yet to re-visit the topic of preparedness with my family.
To an extent I am a coward. I know how I will react in an emergency. We’ve had multiple hurricanes and nor’easters. We’ve had a “gas crunch” which saw people fighting on long lines. I have stared-down armed assailants and fought violently to clear a path through harm’s way. And worse, I have performed CPR on my dying child, and failed, while others either panicked or froze in fear. I know exactly who I am.
I’m just still trying to find out how to be him. Until then I am shrouded in Operational Security in my own home. I am “The Secret Prepper”.