Usually this goes without saying…however many don’t understand this as it needs to be understood in its full concept.
First off I will start off by saying this.
IF YOU WANT TO BE KNOWN AS A PREPPER, TELL EVERYONE YOU ARE A PREPPER AND YOU ARE FINE WITH THIS THEN DO IT!
I’m not one to tell ANYONE what to do with their life, if they want to live alone in the woods, more power to you, if they want to work a blue collar job and have buckets of food at a cabin somewhere, good for you, whatever makes you happy and increases the happiness in your life and your families as well as gives you the ability to care for them, man..do it!
However MOST preppers don’t want to be known as Preppers or for their friends and families to know that they do this, or they just fear that others will come looking for a handout or the government might come knocking, there’s a lot of reasons.
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD LAY LOW
- People wont come crying looking for help because they know you have a lot of stored stuff. You can choose when, how and if you will help them according to your conscience and faith.
- The government wont peg you as a “danger” to society since you well, are responsible.
- You wont have to worry about criminals or friends turned criminals putting your family in more danger because people know about your buckets and water barrels.
- You wont be asked to “give” your stuff to the local, state or national government for the “greater good”
- Overall its just smarter in my opinion. I may have a podcast and a site, but I can count on my fingers the amount of people who know where I keep my preps and that I do this.
HOW YOU CAN LAY LOW
- First thing is don’t call yourself a Prepper, don’t talk about it at office parties, don’t mention it to family, AND ESPECIALLY DON’T TALK ABOUT IT ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!
Like I said if you WANT to then do it, by all means. And a caveat is often you will end up meeting someone or a family member who is a prepper or is just starting to get into the prepper mindset and mentions it to you or around you. Play it smart ease into the conversation, make sure YOU ARE both on the same wavelength, be paranoid, like your CIA approaching a possibly Russian you can turn to your side; you have to be sure they are friendly to the idea before you verbally diarrhea all your pent up energy on this subject!
- If you want to “Like” Prepper Facebook pages (shameless plug…but wed love to have you stop by the GNP facebook page!), or talk to Prepper friends on that site, create a fake identity.
I know I know, i have a GNP facebook page and I ENCOURAGE people to share it with their friends, etc. I assume that those of you who like the page or comment, etc are the “out” Preppers, and I would never try to force someone to do anything public like that if I didn’t think most of their friends knew it in the first place. To create a “fake identity” just read my post on ONLINE PRIVACY, and download the TOR browser. Once you get on that go to yahoo.com, and set up a email account, unlike GMAIL you don’t have to give your phone number! then use that to create a facebook page, upload the photos, use a fake name or a similar one. Conduct ALL YOUR PREPPING SOCIAL STUFF USING THIS IDENTITY. Log into forums, chat rooms, twitter accounts, pinterest, etc all using this identity, to insulate your Real person from the persona.
- For Pete’s sake DO NOT UPLOAD VIDEOS OF YOU SHOOTING A TARGET WITH SOME GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES NAME OR FACE ON IT! that includes elected ones! DON’T MAKE THREATS OR VEILED STATEMENTS ON ANYTHING! Don’t go around posting on facebook (real or fake identity) that you’ll shoot it out if they come for your guns, or that you hope X person gets shot, etc. That’s stupid, unnecessary and just not in good taste. Never with death up on anyone.
Even if you use the fake identity to do this, you will be SMACK CENTER on the radar for investigation, and now your fake identity will be investigated and even with all the privacy this offers, I personally don’t think it will shield you from a Full fledged intense investigation. So don’t try. After that you will be forever on every list known to (g)man.
- Purchase Prepping supplies, guns and ammunition with Cash. No Checks, Avoid Credit Cards.
If you HAVE TO buy someone with a credit card try using a prepaid one like Green dot which is affiliated with Visa, your name will be registered with that Credit Card however it insulates you if you buy a few of them and use different ones sparingly. No matter how you slice it online purchases will leave a trail, but you can insulate yourself A bit (not much) more with a pre-paid credit card. Sometimes the best deals are on the net. I buy on the net quite a lot but i use various cards so no large orders are ever pegged to one card or to have a repeated history with them. Plus, you are smarter with your money that way. Especially since ammo (as of this moment) require no background check you can purchase large quantities without having a paper trail.
- DON’T ASSOCIATE WITH IDIOTS, NUT-JOBS AND A-HOLES
If you are online and looking for prepper communities there to talk to, check out their forums, see what others are saying, pay attention to the person who runs the site (if they put themselves out there) and what they are saying, read their posts and see their videos. If they are out there, talking about “going to war” or will “fight to the death” or that they want this race to rule over all or whatever. DON’T SIGN UP! NOT FOR A NEWSLETTER! NOT FOR A FORUM! NOT A LIKE ON THEIR PAGE! NOTHING! Its idiotic to associate yourself with whackos, you will be just inviting scrutiny.Why put all your hard work into jeopardy because you associated with a-holes like that?
- DON’T SIGN PETITIONS
Don’t sign these online petitions to stop the gun ban, or to impeach Obama, or to END THE FED. Don’t get me mixed up, I want to end the Fed, i want to stop the gun ban and I want that man out of the white house through legal means. However those mean nothing, they make you feel good, think that they will matter, but they don’t, and there’s no reason to have your NAME NAME NAME put on something, especially since its public and that along with say a few facebook likes and a YouTube video holding your gun, could be just enough to be put on a “watch list” people have been put on no fly lists and others for much much less.
CONCLUSIONS
A lot of this is common sense and once again, for the third time….If you want to be known as a prepper, if you want to be a loud voice, or feel you must be public then keep on trucking, go for it. However do not “Look down” or call others “cowards” for not doing the same, each of us make a choice, weigh the options and decide whats best for ourselves and our families.
Basically the rule of thumb is, don’t use your real name, don’t be public and most of all DON’T DO ANYTHING TO DRAW ATTENTION TO YOURSELF!
Very well said. When I went through Army basic training, a 13 week course back then that combined basic and AIT, I got to week 12 and the drill sergeants still couldn’t remember my name without checking my name tag. I considered this to be a great success. My animal spirit is a mouse. Mice are very smart and wily creatures. You could have a mouse living right under your nose and not even know it. The only people who know we prep are us – it’s a closed loop operation.
THats the beauty of the Preparedness movement, IT is growing wildly and is actually pretty mainstream. Maybe not the 1-5 years worth of food type of prepping but the 30-90 day type. however most of those dont want to talk about it, especially to their friends, when in fact some of their friends may be doing the same. With the net and forums people can openly talk about it, some choose to reveal their true identities but many do not. It is a wonderful thing to be able to do that and learn from so many while keeping it quiet on the homefront.
I totally agree with “DON’T SIGN PETITIONS”. Talk about marking yourself! Good article!
The whole petition thing is kind of stupid in my opinion. If its something that is unimportant and non-controversial it may help. However over things like Gun Control/Gun Rights, Spending, Taxation, overseas Wars, NDAA, etc. The Battle lines have been drawn and whether you have 10k, 100k or 1 million signatures, it wont change anyones mind in washington. Now a march might, if you got 10 million people to march on washington, etc that might be something worth doing, but you dont need to sign a petition for that. All you end up doing is signing your name to thing that could be used against you later. Say if a gun confiscation came, which it wont, but lets say selective confiscation, signing petitions like that could make you seem unstable, anti-government, dangerous, etc.
I AGREE THAT YOU SHOULD LAY LOW ON WHO KNOWS YOU PREP. ONLY THOSE INVOLVED IN YOUR PLAN NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE UP TO. THE SAME PEOPLE YOU TELL WILL BE AT YOUR DOOR IF THEY DID NOT PREPARE. FRIENDS WILL BECOME ENEMIES IF THEY ARE HUNGRY AND NEED TO FEED THEIR FAMILY. DON’T PUT YOURSELF IN THAT SITUATION. CHOOSE YOUR CORE GROUP WISELY AND HAVE A SOLID SET OF RULES ABOUT KEEPING EVERYTHING YOU DO A SECRET. IT MAY WELL SAVE YOUR LIFE AND THE LIVES OF YOUR GROUP. http://www.preppinforthefuture.com
I dont necessarily think you shouldnt mention it at all to friends and family, you just never say how indepth your preps are. A casual mention of Sandy or Katrina asking in general, maybe it would be good to have some stuff put away just in case? If they dismiss it, no harm no foul, if they response with something like..”You know we have about a month worth of food put away for things like that” You can mention a Oh wow, yeah i think we have a couple weeks or so. But going around saying to every tom dick and sally “I have a years worth of food and solar panels and…and…and.” is definitely not an intelligent thing to do. Its your choice ultimately, but I WOULDNT!