Category: Survival Mindset

“Yuppie” Turns Prepper, by J.T.

My conversion to become a “born again&rdqu o; prepper started in the summer of 2011, when I was settling down to bed and surfing the net with my iPad. Performing some calculations on the national debt, as a Certified Public Accountant, I understood one thing– all the money in the world from every country wouldn’t or couldn’t be enough to even make a dent in its reduction, let alone a complete pay off. At that time, I had even calculated that approximately 18% of the Gross National Product (GDP) was used to pay just the interest on the national debt… …


Average American Preparation Begins, by C.H.

I am writing this article to inform other average Americans of how I began prepping, in hopes that my suggestions will be helpful for those who are just beginning. I began prepping after watching numerous shows on the National Geographic channel in connection with current news channels. Recognizing that America is vulnerable in several aspects (i.e. our power grid, internal terrorists, and weather events), I began to visualize how unprepared my family and I were in the event of a national emergency. Now you may be saying to yourself “in the event of an emergency, our government will take care …


Not Ready Yet!, by Sara

I started prepping back in 2008, when the financial crash hit our family hard. We were going about our business, both my husband and I working ourselves to death enjoying the “American dream”– a mortgage, a couple of car payments, kids in college, and a disposable income that was quickly gobbled up each month by luxuries that included the latest iPhone, every child having his or her own computer, rib eye steaks for dinner, rounds of golf, and things like this. When the financial free fall started, we were not prepared. We lost everything! On top of that, my husband …


Your Friends, by D.D.

Most people don’t see the need to prepare. To them, these funny stories about the end of the world (in one form or another) are nothing but a passing amusement, at best, or the ravings of paranoid doomsayers, at worst. Still, though, they have a backup, fool-proof plan, just in case they are wrong. This plan, of course, is to come to your house. As soon as they hear of any of your preparations, they casually invite themselves over: “If anything does happen, I know where I’m going…” They speak as if you’re preparing to carry their burden, too, and …


How to Make a Rope Out of Plastic Bags, by Zac T.

Here’s a little about me. I am a graduate student striving towards my Master’s in Public Health, which means I spend most of my time studying infectious diseases, what food people need during emergencies, and how to fight bioterrorism. When I am not pondering these problems, I enjoy backpacking, lifting weights, and growing bell peppers. You wander from aisle to aisle, flashlight in hand, down what used to be your local tool supply store. When the first case showed up over the mountain about three months ago, most of the stores in town were looted pretty heavily. This place is …


Letter Re: Feeding Farm Animals

Thank you for the article on kids feeding farm animals. It certainly can be dangerous around the farm or ranch. It can even be deadly. But your comments on acclimating kids to handle these chores is spot on. I am 68. When I was 10 or 11, I was tormented by three geese at a neighboring farm. My older brother kept a horse there, and so I was there frequently to help care for it. I had to figure out on my own how to handle those geese. I had to do so out of sight of the owner, who …


Letter: A Two Year Experiment

Two years ago I buried cash and silver coins on some property I own as an experiment to see how well the cash and silver would fare. Oct 31st 2014 was the day it was recovered. The vessel was a white plastic PVC pipe about 6” round and about 1.5 feet long capped and sealed with PVC Glue. The cash was placed in standard zip lock sandwich bags and a moisture absorber pouch was placed in each. The silver was placed in the standard coin tubes you receive when buying 20 coins at a time. No absorbers were placed in …


Survival To Go, by JMD – Part 1

Many of us have invested in learning the skills, stockpiling the tools and supplies, and hiding the caches necessary to survive in the event of a major disaster that impacts our local area, but the reality is that these types of events happen around the world on a daily basis. While skills are useful anywhere and anytime, the best stores and caches are useless if you’re hundreds or even thousands of miles away when a disaster strikes in your current location! While developing my survival strategy, I realized that I had a major gap– I travel a lot on business, …


Letter Re: Kids Can Earn Their Keep

Dear Hugh, I thought T.B. had some good ideas for kids involvement in almost any situation, but I wanted to bring up a point about feeding the animals. We are about two years into our new retreat now, and in the process we acquired farm animals. The first year we bought chickens; the second year we bought cattle. My experience with both has led me to believe it is not necessarily a good idea for children to be working with farm animals, as I had my own learning curve with them that has resulted in some injuries. I’ve owned two …


Kids Can Earn Their Keep, by T.B.

There are so many things to consider when making your plans for when we arrive at TEOTWAWKI that it seems overwhelming at times. One of my own concerns is being able to take care of my grandchildren. My wife and I have five grandchildren (soon to be six) that live close enough that we would be expecting them to join us in the event of an economic or societal collapse. Thinking about that possibility has motivated me to stock up on books, games, crafts, toys, and so forth in order to keep them entertained and maybe a little distracted while …


Survival is Attractive, by L.M.

As a young, single female, I guess I’m probably the furthest in most eyes from the typical profile of a self-sustaining person who prepares for anything. I am a 26 year old regular girl with no military family or background. I never really liked camping or the outdoors, and I don’t even live in an overly remote or homestead-type community. I grew up just like most every other girl– cheering, having sleep-overs, and generally being as naïve as most girls are, unfortunately. I’m not unusually strong or unique; I’m just a girly girl. I’ve always shopped and been focused on …


Guest Article: Lights Out, by NightlyJazz

Not to take away from the novel of the same name by David Crawford–which really is an excellent book that I do recommend you read as well as save a hard copy–I experienced my own little Lights Out situation. I’ve always wanted to test my preps by switching off the electricity and running everything off the grid, but I never pulled the trigger. I kept telling myself that I did not have enough equipment to do a test, plus there was also the fact that I was afraid, as a single father of one-, two-, and three-year olds, my children …


Emergency Prepping, Sustainability, and the Idea of Adapting in Advance, by F.J. – Part 2

Prepping is a great cultural example of the observations that led bio-cultural anthropologists to a hypothesis that suggests human brains are hardwired to use past experience and present observations to make projections of hypothetical future scenarios following a basic “if–then” logical model. Those practices, which are inherent in all of us, form the basis of storytelling— an art form that humans alone have the capacity to practice. They say it’s an evolutionary trait we adapted to guide our decision making, since the days of our primitive ancestors, through all those stages of change that hadn’t happened yet, or were only …


Emergency Prepping, Sustainability, and the Idea of Adapting in Advance, by F.J. – Part 1

“We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived, but when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote, numbered steps …


A National Guardsman’s Experiences During Hurricane Sandy, by FDO

I’ll give you a little background about me. I was born, raised, and am currently living in New England. I have a B.A. in History and have just begun work on my M.A. in the same field of study. This past June marked four years in the National Guard, and I received my commission as a Field Artillery officer (13A) in 2013. Currently, I serve as a Battery Fire Direction Officer and am a graduate of Field Artillery Basic Officer Leader’s Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and the U.S. Army’s Air Assault School. I have been reading the blog for …