How To Start Prepping: Top Ten List

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Why your family might not survive the coming crisis

Today I want to talk to you about something very serious
but a little bit uncomfortable.

But before I do, I want you to ask yourself this vital
question:

"What steps would I take to ensure my family's safety and 
security after a crisis or natural disaster?"


There is no humorous way to say this so let's not beat
around the bush. I want to talk to you about the many
reasons why your family might not survive a crisis.

* The most common killers

Let's say that a crisis situation descends on your area,
whether it's a natural disaster, an industrial disaster, a
financial disaster, or a conflict disaster.

Depending on the type, the disaster itself might not even
be the biggest killer. The aftermath can often do just as
much damage to an insufficiently prepared population.

Thirst is one of the major killers in nearly all disaster
scenarios. You can survive for three weeks without food,
but only three days without water.

Because the water supply is often one of the first things
to get affected in a catastrophe, it is incredibly
important to have access to clean water.

In addition, you should have several ways of filtering and
purifying unclean water.

Just like we often take water for granted today, we often
take protection against the elements for granted. But
insufficient protection against weather weakens and kills.

It is not just a matter of having the tools to stay warm
in the cold, or cool off in extreme heat.

Without staying dry and out of the wind, you'll become
more susceptible to cold weather.

Hygiene is another factor that we take for granted, but in
a survival scenario, poor hygiene leads to infections that
affect your overall survival odds.

Lastly, there is the human factor: violence.

As much as we would like to think that an emergency brings
out the best in us, our most compassionate selves, in
some people it unleashes the beast.

But, more so than making already ambiguously moral people
bad, disasters have a way of bringing out the
opportunists and giving rise to already violent tendencies.

Take Houston, Texas, for example: When the victims of
Hurricane Katrina was sheltered there, homicides went up
by 23%.

"But what about hunger?" you may ask. "I have all of these
food preps!"

Of course, hunger kills. Hunger leaves you weak, as well
as open to viruses and bacteria. But you knew that! You've
prepped for it or you are prepping for it now.

Your family probably won't be dying from hunger.

* Incorrect prepping

That said when it comes to longer-term disaster
situations, food availability does, of course, play an
important role.

Faced with a three-year disaster, you won't survive if your
food preps expire in a year. And if all you have are beans
and rice, you may suffer from palate fatigue and fall prey
to illness.

Incorrect prepping kills. That said, it's not usually
incorrect food prepping that is the most immediate killer.

The real problem arises when the entire family's needs
aren't fully considered.

For example, if you have young children their needs will
be different from yours, and if you don't prep properly
for your pets, they may not make it.

This goes far beyond food and water and into other aspects
such as protection against the elements, first aid,
hygiene products, and more.

Bug-out scenarios are particularly precarious. Fleeing
home means that incorrect prepping becomes all the more
dangerous.

Failing to prep medications is a killer in a large number
of scenarios that most preppers would not even consider
disasters or emergencies.

Even a few days of being snowed in can become highly
dangerous if you don't stock your medications and supply
is running low.

* Dependency

Dependency is the deadly cousin of incorrect prepping. In
particular, I am talking about dependency on people.

Let's say that there is a bug-out scenario and you are far
away and unable to get to your family.

What would that mean for them if you are the only one who
is strong enough to carry the main bug-out bag with the
necessary supplies?

What would that mean for them if you are the only one who
knows how to use all of those survival supplies?

What if you have designed the entire bug-out plan around
your very specific survival skills?

Your family will be dead in the water without you.

There are some dependencies that you just have to accept,
of course. An infant will not carry on without you, nor
will a weak elderly or handicapped family member.

When it comes to certain dependants, such as certain types
of pets, you might even have to make the tough decision to
sacrifice them because of their dependency.

* Insufficient skills

Last, but certainly not least, your family simply might not
have the knowledge or capabilities to survive. When you are
the lead survivalist in the family, their insufficient
skills can lead to dependency.

But insufficient skills can apply to anyone and does not
necessarily mean that some family members are more
dependent than others.

Insufficient skills often boils down to not enough drills.

It is not enough to have the tools; you have to know how
to use them in a given emergency. That will give you the
ability AND the confidence to see it through.

Don't forget about the little ones. A lot of smaller
children have routines that they are used to and will have
a massive meltdown when those routines are broken.

Your toddler won't be able to learn to build a shelter,
but he should, for example, be able to fall asleep, to
eat, and to stay relatively quiet in an emergency
scenario.

I hope that was more eye-opening than terrifying, although
a little bit of fear is not necessarily a bad thing!

 Main Causes of Food Shortages

This is not just an academic exercise; it's one that will

help you to see food shortages as they develop - before

it's too late.

Unfortunately, you may have many opportunities to watch

these common food shortage causes unfold.

Food shortages are currently a reality affecting large

parts of the world, including impoverished families in

developed countries.

Greece, Spain, China, India, and Venezuela are just some

of the countries where very large numbers of people are

currently going hungry. But, hunger is coming closer and

closer to home.

In the United States, nearly 50 million people are living

with the uncertainty of not knowing when and where they

will get their next meal.

What causes this widespread hunger?

* Nature

Extreme weather is increasing in many parts of the world.

Drought, in particular, has been a major player in food

shortages during these early years of the 21st century.

It is currently the most common reason for the food shortage.

Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Guatemala are just some of

the countries currently suffering from several years'

long food crisis at the hands of drought.

Although the farmers in these countries are used to

dealing with low levels of rainfall, often by selling off

livestock, several consecutive years of drought have left

their resources depleted.

* Poverty

A more common reason for hunger in all regions of 

the world is the economy.

Greek charities report that around 90% of the people in

lower class city neighborhoods are currently subsiding on

food banks and soup kitchens.

The cause? The collapse of the Greek economy in 2009.

Without jobs, it doesn't matter that there is food to be

had; many people can no longer afford it.

And when the poor are hungry, they are weak, more likely

to fall ill, and less likely to be able to take action to

get out of poverty and satiate their hunger.

Poverty is a self-perpetuating hunger cycle.

* Lacking infrastructure

In the developing world, one of the main reasons for

hunger is that the infrastructure needed to feed the

hungry is not prioritized, or there are no funds for it.

There are not enough roads, silos, and warehouses. There

is no infrastructure for getting water to the crops.

This either raises the costs of the food produced beyond

what people can pay, or it means that the food does not

get to the people regardless of what they are willing to

pay.

At its worst, it means that food is produced but spoils.

This is a major problem for many developing countries; yet

their governments continue to spend money on urban

developments.

Because the farmers cannot sell their food, they cannot

grow more, and so a downward spiral begins.

* Unsustainable farming practices

This world is rife with unsound farming practices.

Deforestation, overgrazing, and over-cropping are just a

few of the problems the environment faces.

We poison our water with fertilizers, and we kill all of

the pollinators with insecticides so that our crops won't

grow in the future.

We leave our fields bare in the winter winds, leading to

large soil losses and we spread human waste on food

crops, introducing diseases into our soil.

We plow and we spray so much that nothing lives in the

soil, and the only way to make it fertile again is to

poison our water with more chemical fertilizers.

Never mind how we are patenting modified seed so that

farmers in developing countries can't save seed from year

to year but have to plunge into financial ruin and go

hungry themselves.

Don't get me wrong; I love the countryside and have great

respect for farmers. It is really good out there!

But, there are also widespread bad practices, even in the

developed world. Farmers are often forced into these

practices by government subsidies and regulations.

In many parts of the world, the soil is simply dying. There

is nothing left for it to give - until, of course, we

start taking better care of it.

When the soil erodes, salinate and becomes desert, people

go hungry.

* War

Lastly, the war continues to be the main reason for hunger and

food shortages in the 21st century.

Unlike during World War II, when food imports were cut off

and supplies had to be saved for the troops, war-based

food crises today are often more acute.

Many of the current armed conflicts are displacing

millions of refugees. These refugees need to be fed, and

the regions giving them refuge cannot feed all of those

new hungry mouths.

It's not because those regions aren't normally perfectly

well-equipped to feed their people. There are just, very

suddenly, too many of them to feed.

There you have it, and that is not even getting into the

postulated reasons for coming food crises, such as global

climate change. But it's a good start to understanding why

so many go hungry now and why your family might go without

food in the future.

7 Shopping Strategies to Build Your Disaster Supplies

By now you have some idea of what it means to be a

prepper and you are probably ready to get started collecting your own survival supplies.

It can be a daunting project at first. On the one hand,

you want as many preps at home as soon as possible, but on

the other hand, covering all your bases would take a hefty

budget.

I wish that I could tell you that you can have it all, but

the truth is that you are going to have to decide which is

more important to you:

Amassing preps quickly - or - Amassing preps cheaply

You will also have to decide whether it is more important

to have the highest quality preps or to have higher

quantity.

Prepping is all about prioritizing. If you are not already

a master prioritizer, then prepping will help you develop

the skills to get there.

To help you get started, here are seven strategies that

you can use when building your disaster supplies.

1. Prepper kits... and we're done!

For the prepper who has no shortage of money and wants to

feel safe as soon as possible, there are a great number of

survivalist kits available.

You don't have to calculate your family's calorie needs or

learn to make 500 different dishes with rice and beans;

all you need to do is buy a six- or twelve-month food kit.

You don't have to go through the trouble of researching

and building a bug-out bag or car kit because they're

available pre-made online.

First-aid kits, water purification kits, survival cooking

kits, survival knife kits, survival garden kits ... these

can all be bought and shipped to your location.

Even if there are some quite competitively priced kits out

there, you are going to end up spending a lot of money.

That is just not a possibility for everyone.

For others, stocking only these ready-made kits is

unthinkable because generic kits are not tailored to their

individual needs.

It is hard to argue with the convenience, though, of

being fully prepared as soon as your kit arrives.

2. Starting with what's lethal

Everyone who doesn't have more money than they have time

is going to have to decide where to start with this

the overwhelming task of prepping.

One way to go about it is starting with what could kill

you.

Do you have severe allergies? If so, what would happen if

you got an allergic reaction while the roads are blocked

or there is no one home to drive you to the hospital?

What would you do if you cut yourself deeply while

cooking? Do you have the tools on hand to handle that

until you can get to a medical professional?

Do you have extremely cold winters and rely only on an

electric heating system?

With this strategy, you won't be prepared for everything

immediately, but you will survive deadly scenarios!

3. Starting with what is likely

If you don't want to start with what is lethal, you can

start with what is most likely. This is a very simple and

efficient way of prioritizing your shopping.

In its very essence, this strategy asks the question: Am I

most likely to lose my job or live through a zombie

apocalypse?

If the answer is "zombie apocalypse," that's the scenario

you'll prepare for first.

Of course, you will probably start by preparing for a

power outage, an accident, a lost job or being snowed in

and then work your way up.

You won't be prepared for everything for a long time, but

the odds will always be in your favor.

4. Starting with the short-term

Prepping for the short-term first, moving into the

long-term later is the shopping strategy many preppers prefer.

This way, you are not making guesses as to what kinds of

situations you ought to be preparing for. You are

preparing for them all, but starting small.

The upside is that you are preparing for a wide range of

scenarios.

The downside is that some of those scenarios may last for

much longer in duration than what you will be ready for

in quite some time.

5. Low-budget strategies

The prepper who has a strict budget to work with has many

great strategies to apply in combination with one of the

last three shopping priorities.

Classic low-budget strategies such as buying in bulk,

buying from wholesale corporations and clipping coupons

can, with great benefit, be used by preppers.

Preppers with a cash trickle instead of a cash flow, who

find it difficult to justify large purchases even to

justify savings, can start by buying just a few extra

items on each shopping trip.

Truly handy preppers can create their own preps by buying

produce very cheaply at the end of the season and canning

or drying it themselves.

6. Quality over quantity

If you are a stickler for quality, you may choose to prep

more slowly in order to save up money for the very best.

If that is the case, know now that you are in good

company. The survivalist and prepper communities are full

of people who share a love for fine things - especially

if those high-quality things involve knives, tools and

weapons.

Better quality often means better durability. Beware,

though, of dooming yourself to inertia simply because you

want the best. Sometimes it is better to compromise.

7. The middle road

It's okay to want the best, but sometimes you have to

settle. Maybe you can invest in the best possible knife,

but spend less on a handgun?

Maybe the best costs so much that you are saying no to a

a large number of crucial preps when something a little less

perfect would do just as well.

You have to weigh the cost of having the best of the best

against your need to take care of you and your family.

Otherwise, you may have a great knife but go hungry in a

disaster. 

Learn a little about Bug Out Bags

 5 Supermarket Items That Sell Out Instantly in a Crisis

 Let’s look into a worst-case scenario!

 Disaster preparedness can be a

difficult topic to explore, but it can also be very

empowering once you start to take action.

In this and the next few newsletters, we are going to dig

deeper into the prepping mindset and look at the specific

items you will need to buy now before it's too late.

But before you go any further, I implore you to check out

this short (and jaw-dropping) video that will show you

exactly how quickly essential items will sell out

following any crisis.

This is scary stuff, but you need to understand it to

survive when all hell breaks loose.

We are starting today with the top five grocery items that

you can't keep putting off.

These are the items that sell out instantly in a crisis,

and if you wait until you know that a crisis is coming,

chances are that you will find the shelves bare.

Remember, though, that these items alone will not get you

through every emergency situation. They are simply the

items people who do not prep will desperately want.

They are also items that you can forego in certain

situations if you decide to prepare differently. We will

talk a little bit about that too.

Even if you ultimately decide to do things differently,

understanding this list will make you a better prepper

because you will better understand your needs.

Let's get started!

1. Bottled water

Most people can survive for three weeks without food. But

go for three days without water and you'll be, generally

speaking, dead.

In our day-to-day lives, we don't often have to stop and

consider water. It's just there in the tap, all day every

day. It's cheap, and it is abundant. Not to mention it's

clean.

It doesn't take much for the water supply of an entire

city to spoil, however.

A flash flood or a hurricane can drive all sorts of

impurities into the water, and there's no telling the

catastrophic chemical damage an industrial accident could

do.

Did you know that the World Health Organization recommends

5 gallons of water per day per person? If it's shocking

to read now, just imagine only learning this when the

supply runs dry!

That is just for drinking and the very most basic hygiene.

If you hope to cook food, wash more thoroughly,

or do laundry, that number multiplies.

That is why water is the first thing that supermarkets run

out of when shit hits the fan. And that is why you need to

keep a significant supply of water.

It doesn't have to be the pre-bottled stuff. If you prefer

to buy food-grade containers and fill them with your own

water, that works just as well. But you will need water

and plenty of it.

2. Canned foods

Upon hearing warnings about impending doom, most people

will immediately think of canned foods. Why?

While it is quite possible to prep without any canned

foods at all, for example, using only dried foods or army

rations, most preppers like to stock canned food.

Canned food is brilliant for survival. It has a very long

shelf-life is easy to store and can be eaten cold and

uncooked if need be.

It is also possible to store canned foods without

subjecting your family to the toxic coatings found inside

these metal canisters, but it is more work.

To avoid those toxins, you would have to buy food canned

in glass or to can food yourself.

Remember that even canned food has an expiration date, and

be sure to buy things that your family is willing to eat.

Ten containers of the corned beef hash will do you no good if

you can't stand the stuff!

3. No-prep-necessary dry foods

In those relatively short-term emergencies, in particular

those deriving from extreme weather, dry ready-to-eat

foodstuffs disappear from the supermarket shelves in no

time.

Foods in this category would at any other time just be

considered snacks. In a crisis, however, they get promoted

to a full meal since they require no cooking or special

storage, such as a refrigerator.

This includes biscuits, crisp bread, dried nuts, rusks,

crackers, muesli bars, trail mix, and shortbread.

You may also include in this category those vacuum-packed

cakes and muffins which have hardly a natural ingredient

in them yet an astonishing shelf-life.

The reason that people run out and buy this is because

they aren't preppers. When unfortunate things happen, they

don't have the tools to cook or heat food.

You, on the other hand, are a prepper. You do not strictly

speaking need to survive on potato chips and the kind of

"blueberry" muffins without a single blueberry in them.

If you want to, though, go ahead and stock up on some of

these things anyway. Little snacks go a long way toward

raising spirits and providing an energy boost.

And maybe the emergency situation will be such that you

are just too tired to eat anything else.

* Bread

Bread and all of its relatives, from humble hamburger buns

to fancy croissants, are quick to sell out for the same

reason that dry ready-to-eat snacks are.

Although its shelf-life is often quite short, bread needs

no preparation and offers a lot of energy. White bread in

particular doesn't provide much in the way of nutrients,

but that doesn't matter much in a crisis.

Bread is great if you have no other food storage and no

way of preparing food, but the average prepper won't need

to run out and buy bread.

And given its short shelf-life, there is no real reason to

stock bread either.

* Beer

Given that it is essentially liquid bread, it is quite

appropriate that beer flies off the shelves in any

emergency.

Beer contains plenty of calories, making it very easy to

stock up on energy by drinking a few bottles.

On the other hand, alcohol makes you drowsy so if you

were hoping to actually feel more energized, you had

better stick to light beer.

The real reason that people stock beer in a crisis

probably has more to do with comfort than calories. If

that's something you sympathize with, by all means stock

beer!

Even if you don't drink much beer yourself, beer is

excellent for bartering with your neighbors for other

valuable goods.

Now that you know what you'll need to buy to keep your

belly full in an empty-shelves situation, in the next

post we'll look at the strategies you can use to

prep efficiently, cheaply and quickly.

Supermarket Shortages

Make no mistake, shortages come about very quickly when an

emergency looms on the horizon.

Most people aren't preppers. As a result, they are not

equipped with the tools to handle most emergency

situations. When one arises, they panic.

That panic generally translates into fleeing or shopping.

Not leisurely shopping, of course, but intense, highly

focused sprees with the intent to grab whatever might be

needed to get through declining circumstances.

But regardless of what they do in the aftermath, non-

preppers are exposing themselves to situations where they

might be out of electricity, heat or water, and they

won't be set up to handle that.

When the news breaks, they flood the supermarket aisles,

leaving the shelves empty of anything that could possibly

be useful to you and your family in the coming crisis.

Are you equipped to handle an emergency scenario, or will

you be amongst those who feel the panic mounting as you

find shelf after shelf bare?

If you think that you might be one of those unprepared

persons, make a choice today to change.

Choose not to be part of the panicked masses.

Prepping is not just for people in tin foil hats and

bunkers, hiding from the government, aliens, communists

and zombies.

Prepping is for everyone who doesn't want to be left

standing in an empty supermarket with no way to feed a

family if the electricity goes out in the coming storm.

Prepping is for everyone who want to stay comfortable and

in good spirits through five days of being snowed in.

Prepping is for everyone who doesn't want to risk not

getting their child or spouse to the hospital soon enough

because of a sudden allergic reaction.

And, seeing as you've signed up for this newsletter,

chances are that prepping seems right to you.

* If you were a prepper...

What would a crisis look like?

Instead of rushing to the supermarket in the face of an

emergency scenario, you would be focusing on "bugging in,"

a survivalist term meaning to shelter in place.

Instead of shopping, you would be breaking out your heat

and light sources, your cooking equipment, your food and

your hygiene supplies, and you would be securing your

property to minimize damage.

Or maybe you would have a dedicated plan in place, meaning

that you weren't forced to stay and weather the storm.

Instead you would "bug out," meaning to shelter elsewhere.

Instead of shopping, you would grab your bug-out bag, put

your family in the car, and drive to a safe location.

And if you had to stop on the way, it wouldn't matter that

all hotel rooms are already taken because you'd have a

comfortable tent, a seasonal sleeping bag and food to

keep you going.

* If you aren't a prepper...

How differently could this scenario play out?

I'm not here to make you feel bad, or scare you for no

reason, but I want you to think about what would happen if

you got to the supermarket to find there was no food left.

You know that extreme weather is coming. You might be out

of heat. You might be out of electricity. Your gas supply

will be cut off. The water mains may be polluted.

The supermarket is out of bread, crackers and canned

foods. Everything available will have to be cooked

somehow. The looters have taken everything down to the

last package of hot dog buns.

The aisles are all out of water, milk, juice, beer and

carbonated beverages. Even expired items are becoming a

hot commodity.

There are no candles and no lamp oil. The flashlights are

gone, but that doesn't matter much since so are the last

of the batteries.

If stores had once stocked blankets and camping gear,

there is no sign of that now.

Where do you go from here? What about children? And pets?

When you prep, you ask these questions while life is still

comfortable so that you never have to live through that

panic and fear.

* How to get started

So, you want to be prepared, but you don't know where to

start?

There are many strategies to prepping. Stay with us, and

we will discuss a few of them in the coming posts.

But if you are impatient to get started - and who wouldn't

be? - best begin with the basics. Start by making a list

of who you are prepping for.

It's such a simple thing, but many people overlook this

step. Instead of making sure that they have supplies for

all family members and pets, they wing it. Preppers never

wing it; preppers consider all the details.

Now that you have a list of all the people, and pets, you

will be prepping for, start with the easy everyday things.

Do you have a sufficient first-aid kit? Does it really

cover all of your bases? Is there enough for the amount of

people in your household? Do you lack pet-specific health

care items?

What about a brief heating failure on a cold day? Do you

have enough extra blankets to keep all of your family

members warm throughout the night?

What about your car? Is there a small but mighty first-aid

kit in there? Are there warm clothes or rain ponchos for

everyone in case of a breakdown in bad weather?

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