The Prepper Motto of The Great Northern Prepper
You are responsible for yourself and your family.
Be open to help from others but not dependent or reliant upon it.
Be open to helping others in a time of need, because you may need their help farther down the road.
The path to Independence begins with you, but leads to community.
Value is money, value is objects,value is knowledge, value is also community, friendship and love.
Always be open to share your value, pass on your value and learn new values from others
Congratulations!
You have just taken your first steps to
self-independence!
First off, What is Prepping?
Prepping is a personal choice that someone makes to not be dependent on the system, government and other people for the basic needs of life.
Prepping is not just food, water and guns. That is a big part, but is only the most prominent image that is conjured up when the public thinks of prepping.
A Prepper is someone who wants to be prepared for unforeseen events in their life, this can be three months of savings in their banks if they lose their job or growing their own food to eat better and cheaper.
Prepping is not anti-government, anti-social or anti anything other than anti-dependence!
You are probably already a prepper in one way or the other. If you have food in your cupboards you are prepping for a meal that you haven’t eaten, if your saving for a car you are practicing delayed gratification, Both of these are in small ways a prepper mentality you already have! Our grandparents and Great grandparents always had extra food and other things in their homes, basements and pantries, but they didn’t call it prepping they called it LIFE! This is a virtue that has been lost on the following generations, as we have come to depend and expect that what we need will ALWAYS be available to us, and we are completely terrified when they aren’t.
In a persons life there are ascending levels of possibility of disaster.
The most likely is
- You losing your job or a spouse passing away,
- Depending on your location, a Tornado, Hurricane or Earthquake
- Power Outages
To Visualize the Probabilities Take a Look at the Post i did on this very thing. THE ASCENDING THREAT PROBABILITY MATRIX
There of course (especially in today’s global economy) the chances of economic disaster, rioting, looting, etc.
But these should be of last concern for you. The chances of you experiencing one of those first three possibilities is very great, and will most likely affect you at one time or another. To put it in perspective, If you lost your job, but had three months worth of food and 90 days of savings in the bank. How much of a stress reliever would that be to know you had three months to find another job without having to worry about where your next meal would come from or that the power wouldn’t be shut off. And even if the worst happens, a economic catastrophe, or major disaster, you now dont have to be DEPENDENT on another person or the government to provide you with food and water, because you already have that, and you are now in the position to help friends or family if they need it.
Now lets dispel some myths about who preppers are and what they do
MYTHS VS. REALITY
- Preppers are a bunch of backwoods anti-government militia members with an arsenal of guns ready for the apocalypse
MYTH!- There are of course some people that do believe this, but by and large the vast majority are regular folks like you that wish to be prepared for lifes uncertainties. You probably know a few, and wouldnt ever know it!
- I’ve seen that show in National Geographic and you all think that theres going to be a nuclear bomb or anthrax attack right
MYTH!- Alot of Preppers have their own pet concern, but that show often lied to the individuals portrayed and selectively picked sections of video to make them look that way, remember T.V. is about ratings and not about truth! That being said its ok to worry about certain possibilities, but Prepping is about being prepared for the most likely disaster to the least likely in that order. It does no good to have Hazmat or NBC (military Nuclear, Biological Chemical suits) gear and then lose your job and all your money is tied up in that gear
- I dont have alot of money, I live month to month for the most part, and looking at those lists, theres no way I can get all that stuff
MYTH!- YOU CAN!!!! There will be another section on this, but anyone can its all about little steps, looking at your finances, dividing up the needs vs. wants, finding money where you can, buying a few things at a time. Its amazing at how just buying an extra can or two of vegetables whenever you go do your normal shopping can add up to a full pantry within the year!
The absolute first place you need to start is in your own finances. Get all your bills from last month, credit card receipts, atm withdrawls, everything! Make a List of the absolute NEEDS
- RENT/MORTGAGE
- UTILITIES
- FOOD (Add up all your receipts for the food you bought for the home, not eating out)
- PETS (If you have them, and people that do, like me, view them as a Need)
- GAS (This will shock you probably)
Then add up all your wants
- CELL PHONE
- INTERNET (This may be a need if your a home based business or student BUT you need to look at the service you pay for, do you HAVE to have High speed, High Bandwith, 350mb per month downloads, etc)
- EATING OUT (Yes this is a WANT)
- TOYS (For me its shooting and gadgets, others its manicures, cars, poker, xbox, etc)
- Anything Else not in the first category
Now that you have this all listed you can see where cuts can be made. For cell phone, do you need the data download, texts, etc? could you switch to a lower cost plan with a pay per month cell phone? some plans offer as low as 30 bucks a month for 300 minutes talk and unlimited text!
Eating out is a hard one, but limit it to once a month or so, those meals out even just subway and fast food (which is horrible for you in more ways than just calories by the way) can add up to hundreds of dollars a year. If you at subway just once a month thats 96 dollars a year! that could be almost a month of food preps in your pantry! This isnt to say that you shouldnt go out and have fun, Prepping isnt about being a ascetic monk in the hills, living on just bread and water.
This list isnt a be all end all, it more to get you thinking! I would reccomend the Dave Ramsey System (google it), which is what i use and he can explain it much better and more in depth! But just from this little snippet you can see that there IS money in your budget for prepping.
I cant emphasize it enough that you need to get your finances in order. With just that you can start to put money aside for both money savings and other preps.
Another thing you need to do is to sit down with your family, loved ones, whatever your situation may be and talk frankly with them about these ideas. If you’re still hesitant and unsure of “prepping” you can just bring it into dinner conversations and see how they feel about it.
“what if there was a big earthquake and store ran out of food, what would we do?”
“What if the economy keeps heading downhill what do you think would happen, and what can we do to make it easier on us?”
These types of things can help to show you that your friends and family have probably thought the same things and maybe even thought about prepping but never got past the “Think stage”. If you are already gung-ho about prepping don’t have sit down your loved one or family and start spewing off pounds of wheat per year, buckets of honey, guns, etc. Your going to make them uneasy! Just start off slow, explain your concerns and more than likely they will agree with you and want to do something, and now you have to plan!
There is more information on
List of Food from 3 months to 1 year and beyond,
and even Precious metals investing and Barter Just click on the Menu at the top of the Page.
Join up on the FORUM to learn more from Preppers just like you!
BUT to get you started
Start small, get a 30 day supply. Then when you have that, start working on a 60-90 day supply. Once you have this then start working on your 6 months, and so on. Remember It isnt impossible! Thousands of people across the US and throughout the world have done the same thing and have been in the same position.
You may even want to start with a 72 hour kit, or as it is called a “Bug out Bag” This is a backpack type item that holds all that you would need to survive relatively comfortable if there was an emergency and you had to leave from work or your home (I recommend two, one in your vehicle and one in your home, because you may not be at home when the unthinkable happens).
