Natural Disasters

The most run of the mill, normal, average person wants to be prepared for natural disasters and isn’t too much worry about anything else. A simple power outage or a tornado or bad winter storm that closes roads is a “normal” and ‘non-paranoid’ thing to be concerned about.

For these people, the answer to the question of how to be a prepper is simple. Stock up on flashlights, batteries, an extra can of gas in case your car is low, and at least a week’s supply of food. Add in a couple of cases of bottled water and you are suddenly qualified as a prepper for a run-of-the-mill emergency.

Economic Collapse

Once you start talking about for a nationwide emergency, then you are starting to be in the big leagues of prepping. If you are worried about an economic collapse and want to prepare, then you need to think about having most of your assets in precious metals and hard assets like real estate. You want to have as little debt as possible.

Prepping for an economic collapse also means that you will need to be prepared in the food/water/power department for a more extended period of chaos where it will be difficult or very expensive to get life’s basic necessities.

Chances are that things will reach a “new normal” after several weeks, so you’ll need provisions to get you through at least that long. You can be assured that if panic sets in at the grocery stores, the shelves will be emptied out just like a toy store on Black Friday.

SHTF Scenarios

The person who is preparing for an SHTF (“Sewage” Hits The Fan) scenario is usually thinking more along the lines of a nuclear event or a total societal breakdown. This person is a survivalist who takes a lot of time to prepare for self-defense and even a “bugout” location where he can escape the dangers, riots, and pandemonium of the urban population centers.

Now that you know how to be a prepper, or at least what frame of mind to adopt, it is time to think about each of these three scenarios happening at the worst possible time. The worst possible time is when you are away from your home, in your car, driving somewhere or maybe just commuting.

When you think about how to be a prepper, most people think of reacting to an emergency situation from the comfort of their home. They forget that they spend a LOT of time in their car or at work, far from the supplies that they think they can count on during an emergency.

Learning how to hunt is critical for survival when you are lost in the woods or even when your city’s infrastructure has been destroyed because of a disaster. You can find game in many urban areas or only a few miles outside of any city. You can expect to find geese, ducks, squirrels and pigeons in an urban environment.

Just because you have a hunting weapon does not mean you will be able to feed yourself. You must know how to use that weapon, in other words you must learn how to hunt. You will need to learn how to handle your weapon, and learn about the game you are hunting, where to find them, identify their tracks and then learn how to process the game once killed. There are several different types of weapons you can use but a firearm is probably the most versatile and accurate weapon for anyone just starting out.

To be successful and to prevent starvation you must develop your hunting skills before you are called upon to provide for yourself and family in an emergency. Stress and lack of skill is a recipe for failure in a survival situation. There are things you never attempt without the needed skills and hunting is one of those things.

Before you can have a successful hunt, it is crucial that you must practice with a weapon and strengthen your hunting skills. If you chose to use a bow and arrow, you should spend many hours practicing shooting targets so you are comfortable and proficient at shooting. Extra precaution must be taken with firearms and safety courses should be attended in preparation of hunting.

There are likely groups in your area that you can join to get training on archery, firearms, and setting traps. Seek out others with hunting skills through internet meetup groups, outdoor supply stores, and local clubs.

Once you are familiar with your weapon or method of hunting, you must get into the woods and hunt but in a controlled situation. You want to learn your skills before a disaster strikes so your failures while training will not have an impact on lives. It will take patience and trial and error to learn the game you are hunting. The investment you put into your hunting skills today will save lives in the future when you are called upon to provide food by hunting.

Not everyone who believes in emergency preparedness actually qualifies as a “prepper” like on the National Geographic show “Doomsday Preppers.” That degree of emergency preparedness is pretty extreme on the scale, though not necessarily “wacko.” Extreme just compare you to the norm. Unfortunately, the “normal” or typical person in America doesn’t concern himself with emergency preparedness. So let’s take a look at what actually makes you a “prepper.”

Emergency preparedness is just good common sense that millions of Americans practice. They have flashlights and batteries and even a backup generator. They have candles and blankets in their car trunk during the winter and that’s about the length of preparedness that the average person who does anything at all will go to.

By contrast, a prepper will have practiced their power outage strategies and have kerosene lanterns, hundreds of extra batteries for their flashlights, and can run their backup generator on propane. And by the way, they have at least 5 extra propane tanks stored for running that generator and for cooking on the grill when there is no power out.

The prepper doesn’t bother with candles for the car trunk, but rather has an indoor-safe portable propane heater to go with their wool blankets. They also have a hand crank powered emergency weather radio with them. Whether a prepper is at home when disaster strikes or away in their car, they are prepared for a lot of different contingencies.

The difference between just normal emergency preparedness, to the prepper, is just one of “honesty” and “courage.” The prepper is honest with himself enough to know how just a little emergency preparedness doesn’t help you so much unless the disaster is very, very brief. And the prepper has the courage to take the steps to ensure that their “preps” are robust enough, because “if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right.”

So that’s it. Now you know when emergency preparedness makes you a prepper!