The short answer is maybe. To increase your possibilities of survival, read this article.
As we were reviewing our food storage and other supplies, my Mom made an interesting observation which resulted in a conversation about why many people won’t survive and a potential solution.
My mother is our chief logistician–meaning that she plans and coordinates the purchasing and storage of our food and other supplies. Most women are the logisticians for their family with sometimes over 90 percent of the food purchasing done by women. When our truck or a semi-truck needs to be unloaded, the men in my family unload it as we purchase cases to sometimes have semi-truck deliveries to unload.
As far as purchasing, we do not purchase any large quantities of food or supplies at stores within our area. I am sure that my local grocery store would happily fulfill our large orders, but I do not need to have any local people talking. We are known as farmers/business people, not preppers and survivalists. People talk and have long memories especially when they and their kids are starving of who potentially has food. We believe very much in the concept of charity and we often discreetly and safely help others. We are currently doing this, so we would increase our efforts during any type of emergency if we were able.
Because we live on a farm, the sight of semi-trucks entering farms ia a normal occurrence and the size of our farm allows a semi-truck to be unloaded without anyone else seeing it occurring. It would be difficult to arrange a large delivery in a suburb or a city location without having people gawk and talk.
The first step for safety is often to live in a rural location preferably one that is food producing where the cows outnumber people both in the state and in your area. Cows outnumber people by a 2 to 1 ratio in Kansas with dozens to 1 in our area. I live in a normal agricultural area, not near any “feedlot” operation which is unsustainable in a crisis as it does not produce its own food. You can call this concept the “Bovine Security Index” with the higher the number the more likely there is the potential for a perpetually sustainable agricultural operation for long term community survival. If you have at least one cow per person in your county, sufficient rainfall, small homesteads, and large farms, you are more likely in a long term safe area. It is not a long term survival strategy to have a “year’s supply of dehydrated food” and live in an area where there is very little rainfall. If the city/municipal water stops working, you will likely die way before you have an opportunity to put a dent in that food supply.
The problem with this is that most people do not live in long-term safe areas, so they must either retreat to them in an emergency or move to them living there full time. That is the first difficulty people face. Currently, to purchase sufficient land in a safe area, build a home, develop a retreat/homestead to a prepared person’s basic standards could cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Few people outside of wealthy people and farmers (who already have most of these areas covered) can afford this on their own.
Some people give up, but many try to involve other people in their plans. That is often the beginning of the first problem, not a likely solution. You are letting other people know that you are a prepper and most likely have preparedness items. People especially preppers are resourceful people and think that their friends or family could help to lighten the load and split expenses.
If you have heard of the expression “herding cats,” then you will understand the herculean task of first trying to convince people that something needs to be done, then convince them to spend money (which many likely don’t have), and then if they are married to get the “spousal blessing” (usually the wife as most preppers are men). Our family is fortunate that my Mom is from a prepping family. My Mom actively participates and supports our family preparedness activities, but I realize most men do not have that same situation. In order to find people to be able to afford big purchases such as retreats or land, some people might try with family members, friends, or acquaintances. This is often a mistake either in the short-term or long-term horizon.
The more people who know, the more people who could potentially blab. Many people like to talk and brag to increase their social standing within their peer group. That is why social media is so popular as many people seek external validation often through the form of some random person clicking that they “like” what you say instead of actually making real accomplishments. The only people who know that we are preppers in our community are the family members who live full time on our farm and members of our group. No other family or community members outside of that small circle know. The people who work on our farm do not know that we are preppers with extra food or extra supplies beyond what little they could see in our kitchen pantry or visible shelves.
Increasing Your Survival Chances
Right now is a good time to be purchasing supplies as items are readily available and forming “alliances” with other smart, prepared people for mutual protection. This is the ancient process of being part of a group or tribe. Starting in the 20th Century, the concept of the “nuclear” family was idealized where grandparents, other relatives, and a functioning community were discarded in the name of independence and self-reliance. Independent of what I ask. (Even back in the 19th Century, successful farmers were not “self-reliant” as they relied on their community–even today neighboring farms in my area help each other.) For those who think they are going to be “independent,” I would say more like independent of one’s senses of rejecting thousands of years of what worked for what is precarious as fewer hands in a survival situation means you have fewer people to divide work and watches (such as sentry watches).
You might think this is contradictory where I say it is important for fewer people to know and then saying more people can be better. Both are correct. Ideally, the fewer unqualified and unprepared people who know, the better, but having qualified people who are prepared is best. I have found it important not to shout from the rooftop that I have large amounts of food/supplies and I am looking for a family/families to potentially join us. I prefer to display some discretion and I post about this on here trying to find more like-minded people, not randomly telling every stranger.<
As we were reviewing our supplies, we concluded that we have sufficient food and supplies for our family/group and have been purchasing supplies for another family if we can find them. The other family may either be my future wife’s family (I am still searching for a spouse) or if my future wife’s family are not the people who initially write to me it could be potential supplies for the family who writes in to me and makes the introduction to a young woman they know. Right now, food and supplies are available, so one phone call is all it takes for a semi-truck full of food and supplies to be delivered to our farm. The difficult part of the survival equation currently is the time it takes to unload it, not the availability of supplies. That equation could easily be reversed if an event occurs then a large percentage of intelligent, but not adequately prepared Americans could be scrambling to find supplies.
If you are from a quality family or also know another quality family, now is the time to be writing in and making plans to see if our families have mutual interests. Based on my family history of being able to predict large events such as World Wars and economic depressions, I can easily see a situation where World War III kicks off with the first notification for many people would be constantly repeating footage shown on television of a mushroom cloud in a distant city and then I receive emails from a number of people who are then asking about retreating to our farm. Allow me to level with you. I file that idea under “too little, too late.”
If a nuke goes off that is not part of a planned test by an international power, our retreat activation mode will be in full sequence counting down to when the door is closed and we are buttoned up until fallout levels are safe to venture out. In the intervening likely hours to unlikely days to until door closure time, I will probably be checking the lists, moving more supplies into the shelter, and making sure the group members are making progress toward our farm. In such a scenario, I will not have any time to be responding to emails from new individuals seeking to bug out to our farm.
Some people may wonder why we don’t just try to buy all of our supplies once we need to activate our retreat (our farm is our retreat, so the process of activation would be different for every scenario from economic collapse to nuclear fallout to pandemic which all present different challenges). The simple answer is that if we need to activate we may have less than a week’s time and it may be just hours. It has taken my family generations to get to this level of preparations. We continually rotate our food and supplies, so if someone is invited they will be eating fresh food! To get to this level in days would be extremely unrealistic.
Briefly consider these four scenarios and consider how you would survive. Remember this article is a gedankenexperiment (thought experiment), not advice or saying something is going to definitely occur.
- Economic Collapse: You could have a week or less before large numbers of people decide to trade their currency into tangibles.
- Nuclear: Tactical nukes going off in one corner of the world could within hours to days advance up the nuclear escalation ladder to full scale thermonuclear war.
- Pandemic: In the event of a rapidly spreading pneumonic treatment resistant infection, it could be less than a week before the world’s supply chains break down and anarchy results.
- EMP: You could wake up in the middle of the night to a power outage (with power drop/surge alarms being a possible first signal) and then find out that an EMP has occurred which could destroy the majority of unprotected electronics. This could trigger an overnight collapse as almost everyone depends on electronics.
It is unknown whether any of these scenarios will take place in the near future or our lifetime, but the point of preparedness is to have a way to mitigate the negative effects and for your family to survive. After something happens or is anticipated to occur is not the ideal time to be buying supplies. This is the time to travel to your retreat if you are not already living there full time.
I have been working on systematically examining each likely scenario starting with the critical first two week period. Within two weeks of a major disaster, many Americans will be dead and dying, so I am trying to prepare people to survive that first two weeks as in this scenario. The cavalry are not on their way. I call this the “Foremost Fortnight” (a fortnight is the formal name for a two week interval) and each one of these scenarios will be examined in a separate article with a thought provoking introductory scenario on what might occur and steps we are taking to survive each situation
Opportunity for Families
I know many survivalists and preppers as I have been in the preparedness movement my entire life and this stretches back to my grandparent’s generation. Most survivalists are private people preferring not for people to know what they have because when the music stops–you need to find a seat! Countless people will be desperate searching for food and supplies. A way to likely avoid being among the desperate hordes searching is to have built your own private reserves of food and supplies as my family has done.
Our own emphasis on privacy as prepared people could also result in fewer opportunities for all of us. I know there might be some people reading currently who know of young women matching my criteria, but do not want to tell them about “Single Farmer” because explaining about me brings up “SurvivalBlog” and then could result in uncomfortable questions about prepping, supplies, and so forth. I fully understand that a young woman or her father would wonder how do you know me and of course you probably do not want to mention that if you are “secret survivalists” who are planning on surviving the collapse. Meeting me you would never suspect that I am from a line of multigenerational survivalists: Farmers yes, business people yes, multigenerational survivalists, no. I figured out a way for a potential solution to this that is beneficial to everyone.
I believe in telling the truth and avoid lying, but you may wonder how can we both thread that needle in this situation. It is very simple: You know me from some activity that other people already know that you do. I have lots of hobbies and activities probably one or more in common with you. I travel widely and may have visited your area. We could discuss whatever activity that people know that you do and then we could “know” each other from this activity somehow. People can “know” each other from a variety of different activities. What I propose is truthful, could easily work, and be beneficial for all of our families. The best camouflage is often just figuring a way to blend inconspicuously into your surroundings.
In order to survive what is coming, you do not need to reinvent the wheel–just make good use of your available resources and my situation of searching for more people may be just what you need to survive what will be likely occurring soon. Even if you already have a well-stocked farm and retreat, it never hurts to have another alternative place to bug out.
As we were doing an inventory of our supplies, my Mom said that there is a definite possibility that few people will survive what is coming as the amount of food and supplies which could be needed in an extended emergency are enormous. During this time, we were brainstorming future family needs as we do not plan just for our group and another family or families who we have not met yet, but for posterity. I am trying to find a young woman to marry and naturally it often happens that people after marriage have children. The needs of children came up in our discussion after I was inventorying our kitchen items that were put aside making sure that nothing was removed from the containers. Over time, sometimes an item will be removed and it could continue to be included on the current list.
That time I took a trip down memory lane unpacking a box of kitchen items. I do not remember using the item as I was a baby, but I heard about it. I found one single infant feeding spoon. I asked my Mom about it and she mentioned that she or my grandmother would wash that one spoon after each meal I ate of baby food. In a crisis, basic sanitation could often be the difference between a child surviving and dying. In previous eras, infant mortality rates were about 10 out of 100 infants died in rural areas and 30 out of a 100 died in large cities in the 1800s. In almost every instance, rural areas are safer in collapse scenarios as diseases tend to amplify in crowded, urban areas. In a long emergency, someone could say the spoon “looks” clean (water can also “look” clean, but be the start of a premature death from cholera) and this could lead to a child dying. It is a lot easier to maintain sanitation and even to have something when there are more of something in inventory (“two is one, one is none” is a very useful saying to apply). To increase our preparedness in this area, I purchased a number of the flatware sets which included infant spoon, small forks and spoons for toddlers and older children to use before they are able to easily use adult flatware. Each situation is different. Maybe you already have children (with plenty of kid’s flatware in your current inventory), but it is often useful to examine each possibility.
There is a possibility that one of these days will be the last delivery, last visit to the warehouse club, and last time you will be able to safely go out for months or even years. If this occurs, you would need to be prepared to survive indefinitely. This would involve taking care of every need from shelter to water to food to security and everything else. We have customized our own “list of lists” that is appropriate for our situation and keep this in electronic and paper formats. The amount of supplies is in my Mom’s words “enormous” and we rotate constantly. This has saved us money and increases our security. We hope that day never comes when we need to use our supplies and the ability to replenish from the store’s extended supply chain has ended, but we are mindful that possibility exists.
If I don’t hear from you first via e-mail, then I hope you will join me in the considering the scenario of how to survive the “Foremost Fortnight: Economic Collapse” which will be my first article in an new upcoming series.
Editor’s Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is from a quality family. For those who are interested, he is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details and a way to contact “Single Farmer,” see this link to his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move [1], and in his February 24, 2026 article on rural migration starting at the bold section on “Continuing My Quest For a Wife”. He can be contacted at his family’s e-mail address: smartsimplepeopleATprotonmail.com. [2](Replace the “AT” with and @ symbol to replace AT).