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Do you personally know any of these "nutters" or are you just basing your statements on things you've heard or read about? Because your descriptions sound nothing like any of the prepared people that I know. Truly "prepared" people start with building community first and work down from there. Stockpiling ammo and freeze dried foods are fairly low on the list.
Posts I've read online.
I agree with you concerning what "truly prepared" should consist of ideally. In practice, in my small city (permanent population 30K) neighborhood we have a non-gated HOA that in theory would serve as a starting point for mutual aid, but in reality there's no cohesion and in most cases no established trust, even if there was much awareness to work with. Several properties in the HOA are owned by outside investors and are full of undergraduate students as renters, so lots of transient residents. It's near impossible to get a quorum of people to attend a business meeting, so no voting happens and things have devolved into long-time officers running the association by fiat basically. Given the lack of interest or commitment we certainly couldn't get anyone to coalesce around community preparedness. At the city level, all there is that's even adjacent to prepping is emergency preparedness classes. And I'm concerned about more chronic problems than the occasional tornado.
I somewhat envy those of you in rural enclaves but my wife is a city girl and I'm lucky she approves of the level of preparedness we have (though she entered a "spousal veto" on the idea of installing a wood stove). And even there, it's on me to plan it and execute it, to make sure the food in the deep pantry gets rotated, etc.
So all this taken together, in practice it is just me having some basic things in place in a family that still remembers the shortages early in the pandemic and agrees with me in principle we need more resilience because we're going to see more and more pandemic-like systemic disruptions for various reasons.
There are a lot of people like us who are not in a position or at least "not there yet" to do things that get into extensive lifestyle change territory such as homesteading somewhere in the hinterlands. Also we have to deal with the social friction of people who think they can declare the pandemic over by fiat and just decide that masking or even getting vaccinated is just too much to contemplate anymore. So how one "builds community" in this environment around something that requires even more awareness, effort and discipline, I don't pretend to know.
expecting others to come to our aid post SHTF is a non starter and given human nature could be recipe for disaster.
I dont know about US but in UK prepared people numbers less than 1% of the population, probably more like 0.5% maybe even less than that, most of the population will panic post SHTF and panicked people make mistakes and wont survive for long.
freeze dried and canned food have their place in prepping but any stored food is only temporary and will soon be used up.
knowledge and skills will be the catalyst as to who survives and who dosent.
expecting others to come to our aid post SHTF is a non starter and given human nature could be recipe for disaster.
I dont know about US but in UK prepared people numbers less than 1% of the population, probably more like 0.5% maybe even less than that, most of the population will panic post SHTF and panicked people make mistakes and wont survive for long.
freeze dried and canned food have their place in prepping but any stored food is only temporary and will soon be used up.
knowledge and skills will be the catalyst as to who survives and who dosent.
The number of prepared here in the midwest of the US is just over 3%.
It helps, though, that almost 20% of us are taught not to trust others, and especially not to trust the government. Building a community of preppers is a slow and careful task. You have to build trust with each individual, and stop the process if you find they aren't on board. Never show others "everything."
To refute those who think prepping and secrecy is unBiblical:
Isaiah 39:4-7
Quote:
Then he said, “What have they seen in your house?” So Hezekiah [b]answered, “They have seen everything that is in my house; there is nothing among my treasuries that I have not let them see.”
5 Isaiah then said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of armies, 6 ‘Behold, the days are coming when everything that is in your house, and what your fathers have stored up to this day, will be carried to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord. 7 ‘And some of your sons who will come from you, whom you will father, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’”
If you have nothing in common with your neighbors, community, church and no family, then you are alone... what choice do you have? That is your path, in all things.
Do you personally know any of these "nutters" or are you just basing your statements on things you've heard or read about? Because your descriptions sound nothing like any of the prepared people that I know. Truly "prepared" people start with building community first and work down from there. Stockpiling ammo and freeze dried foods are fairly low on the list.
Does anyone have any links to sources that discuss how a neighborhood can set up some sort of a security team in case of emergencies? I've been thinking of coordinating something like this for a long time.
Does anyone have any links to sources that discuss how a neighborhood can set up some sort of a security team in case of emergencies? I've been thinking of coordinating something like this for a long time.
I agree with you concerning what "truly prepared" should consist of ideally. In practice, in my small city (permanent population 30K) neighborhood we have a non-gated HOA that in theory would serve as a starting point for mutual aid, but in reality there's no cohesion and in most cases no established trust, even if there was much awareness to work with. Several properties in the HOA are owned by outside investors and are full of undergraduate students as renters, so lots of transient residents. It's near impossible to get a quorum of people to attend a business meeting, so no voting happens and things have devolved into long-time officers running the association by fiat basically. Given the lack of interest or commitment we certainly couldn't get anyone to coalesce around community preparedness. At the city level, all there is that's even adjacent to prepping is emergency preparedness classes. And I'm concerned about more chronic problems than the occasional tornado.
I somewhat envy those of you in rural enclaves but my wife is a city girl and I'm lucky she approves of the level of preparedness we have (though she entered a "spousal veto" on the idea of installing a wood stove). And even there, it's on me to plan it and execute it, to make sure the food in the deep pantry gets rotated, etc.
So all this taken together, in practice it is just me having some basic things in place in a family that still remembers the shortages early in the pandemic and agrees with me in principle we need more resilience because we're going to see more and more pandemic-like systemic disruptions for various reasons.
There are a lot of people like us who are not in a position or at least "not there yet" to do things that get into extensive lifestyle change territory such as homesteading somewhere in the hinterlands. Also we have to deal with the social friction of people who think they can declare the pandemic over by fiat and just decide that masking or even getting vaccinated is just too much to contemplate anymore. So how one "builds community" in this environment around something that requires even more awareness, effort and discipline, I don't pretend to know.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of all over the place. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to prepare for?
A good starting point is to pick a length of time that you want to live comfortably without any exterior inputs other than what you have on hand or can take with you. Most people who have ever gone camping have done this. Maybe this is something simple like weathering a bad storm and the lack of services that might entail. Once you have prepared for that, nice job- you have accomplished more than most people.
Are you happy with that progress, or do you want to prepare for something worse?
If you have nothing in common with your neighbors, community, church and no family, then you are alone... what choice do you have? That is your path, in all things.
I have nothing in common with other people especially the masses and I trust nobody, having said that there are a few people living locally I could work with-if I had to but I prefer not to, I was brought up as an "only" child and taught to stand on my own two feet, most people these days especially the younger generation have no survival skills, such things are thought of as old fashioned and of no use in the 21st century, many of the old skills have already been lost.
I intend to live a simple life post SHTF, to most people I already am! a lot of so called preppers over this side of the pond tend to make their plans too complicated, many seem to not be able to survive without electricity for instance- even post SHTF-I have and enjoyed every minute of it, I prefer the KISS principle, keep it simple.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of all over the place. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to prepare for?
A good starting point is to pick a length of time that you want to live comfortably without any exterior inputs other than what you have on hand or can take with you. Most people who have ever gone camping have done this. Maybe this is something simple like weathering a bad storm and the lack of services that might entail. Once you have prepared for that, nice job- you have accomplished more than most people.
Are you happy with that progress, or do you want to prepare for something worse?
No offense taken.
I am more clear within myself. Left to myself I would probably move further outside the core urban area, and prep for more than the occasional supply chain hiccup. As it is my wife "needs" Certain Things; even though as spouses go I think she's pretty self aware and cognizant of trends and rational, she is not so much aware that she's willing to forego some aesthetics and convenience. I am aware that my willingness to "go further" is partly a function of my personal interest and enjoyment of some aspects of preparedness, a personal orientation to self-sufficiency, my introversion and growing up effectively as almost an only child (my siblings were 10, 15 and 20 years my senior). Also just being a dude; we don't triangulate on or even particularly value social opportunities in the main relative to the women in our lives.
Parts of what I'm doing would last for years (eg, filtered water -- I have enough filters for about 5 years) because it's cheap / simple / low maintenance. Some of it would only last in practice for a month or so (deep pantry -- some individual items might take 2 years to cycle through but we'd be eating mostly or entirely those things in, say, a famine so they'd go much faster). The deep pantry is in the cellar and no one but me bothers to go down there so it's out of sight, out of mind. If my wife regularly saw, say, a dozen boxes of oatmeal on the shelf she would probably be weirded out by it. I am not. She is only dimly aware that I cycle our stock through there. It's like an abstraction to her.
So the short answer to your question is that in practice I want to prepare for as long as I can get away with and can justify diverting some funds from retirement to preparedness or possibly reducing the resale value of the house (e.g., wood stove that is practical but not very aesthetic because of limited space, and wood storage is closer to the house on our tiny lot than I'd prefer due to insects, etc). Because parts of my plan are cheaper / less intrusive than others, yeah I'm "all over the place" in a sense.
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