This type of prepper prides himself on how prepared he is for any apocalyptic event. He finds it hard to keep his mouth shut about his food preparation, water supply, and his self-sustaining environment that he built as a whole. The problem with this is if a disaster does happen, those ill-equipped groups will surely come for these religious preppers first.
“Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.”
"So you know, I'm not a survivalist nor am I really very outdoorsy in general. I'm basically a relative novice prepper, but what I was looking for with this book was more like "have a plan after the plan" resource. I got to thinking that survival would be necessary after an emergency, but at some point, it would need to become how to live your life with whatever changes there had been in the world. So this was more like an "ok, I survived, what do I do now?" pick for me."
For global catastrophic risks the costs of food storage become impractical for most of the population [54] and for some such catastrophes conventional agriculture would not function due to the loss of a large fraction of sunlight (e.g. during nuclear winter or a supervolcano). In such situations, alternative food is necessary, which is converting natural gas and wood fiber to human edible food.[55]
Everyday more people discover that more freedoms have eroded and much of what they depended upon is in danger of not existing tomorrow. Retirement funds lose substantial value as politicians ask for more from citizens and then give it away to questionable recipients. People want to know what they can do to survive the uncertain future looming on the horizon.
Yes, I agree with you. I am same age group as you, and have been using information available and adapting to my abilities. Personally, I am finding fitness to be the key point in my life, particularly strength training and cardio. Trying to combat age is pretty much a full time job, LOL. It would be nice to get an educated opinion on the specific requirements of prepping for our age group.
I am guessing, I am the homesteader. Or, I would call it “shelter in place prepper”. Since, I am in advanced age, I don’t have the mobility of a 20 year old, to bug out. The problem, I see with a homesteader, is if you don’t have the arms and man power to defend what you, then it will all be taken away. Reason, I am into hiding food in plain site. Pecan trees, oak trees, black berry patch, mushrooms, and such.
Followers of James Wesley Rawles[45] often prepare for multiple scenarios with fortified and well-equipped rural survival retreats.[46] This group anticipates a near-term crisis and seek to be well-armed as well as ready to dispense charity in the event of a disaster.[43] Most take a "deep larder" approach and store food to last years, and a central tenet is geographic seclusion in the northern US intermountain region.[47] They emphasize practical self-sufficiency and homesteading skills.[47]
A good prepper always strives to acquire new knowledge and skills. For many people, prepping simply means going on a shopping spree: they buy extra food and water; they prepare a bug out bag and get themselves a cool machete or combat axe and camo outfit, and do nothing other than that. They don’t practice their skills, and after a while, the novelty wears off and they forget all about survival.
In the next decade Howard Ruff warned about socio-economic collapse in his 1974 book Famine and Survival in America. Ruff's book was published during a period of rampant inflation in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Most of the elements of survivalism can be found there, including advice on food storage. The book championed the claim that precious metals, such as gold and silver, have an intrinsic worth that makes them more usable in the event of a socioeconomic collapse than fiat currency. Ruff later published milder variations of the same themes, such as How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, a best-seller in 1979.
Spurred on later by fears of the 2012 Mayan prophesies of an apocalyptic nature, the Prepper movement is seeing a lot of growth in late 2011 and into 2012. The advent of many television shows and movies that are collapse oriented has helped to nearly bring preparedness to the forefront of societal consciousness. While it is still considered “fringe” by many, the Federal Government is actively promoting preparedness through Ready.gov and many states are developing specific readiness programs.
Emerson: Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
In his book titled Essays, “Self-Reliance” follows “History” so that a balanced and self-contained unit can be created out of these two. Abounding with short aphorisms, the essay begins with an admonition to believe in the true self, which is considered in essence identical with the Universal Spirit: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Emerson then holds infancy, which is favorably contrasted with adulthood, as a model for one to follow in the cultivation of a spirit of independence or nonconformity. His metaphorical use of a babe as a model of nonconformity is a radical twist of Christ’s elevation of it as an emblem of total dependence on God.
As does Wordsworth, Emerson regards a person’s growth normally as a process of losing one’s moral sentiment or spirit of nonconformity. Society is considered to have an adverse effect on the growth of each individual’s independent spirit, whereas solitude may contribute to it. Senseless philanthropy, which encourages dependence on outside help, is thus also thought to be detrimental. When Emerson states that one should live by one’s instinct, whether or not it be from the devil, he is attempting to use exaggeration to shock his audience; his idea is that the inherent moral sentiment, which makes one self-sufficient, cannot come from the devil. Total trust in one’s emotions may well result in contradiction when one’s emotions change, however; noting this, Emerson simply retorts that life itself is an organic process, inevitably involving contradiction. Acting in accordance with true feeling, he believes, will automatically bring about a sound life.
My first exposure to the high-flown pap of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” came in a basement classroom at the private boys’ school where I enrolled to learn the secrets of discipline and because I wanted, at age 14, to wear a tie. The class was early American literature, the textbook an anthology with the heft of a volume of the Babylonian Talmud; a ribbon for holding your place between “Rip Van Winkle,” by Washington Irving, and “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne; and a slick hardcover the same shade of green as the backside of a dollar bill.
Warren Buffett famously removed himself from Wall Street to set up shop in Omaha because his priorities are different than that of most CEOs or investors. Instead of spending his time traveling, speaking, having meetings, and rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers of the Big Apple, he lives quietly in the Midwest and reads as much as he can.
"If you are a serious prepper—serious about survival, about you and your family's well-being, serious about being warm, being able to light a fire, and you want something to count on—depend on and bet your life on—these simple matches are what you need to get. The matches themselves are tanks. They are tough and dependable. They light up automatically when blown out and burn from eight to ten seconds."
After examining their new house — “Decent elevation, but not too solar-friendly” — Mr. Edwards issued his analysis. The Dosters rely on electric power for their heat and water, and given the prevalence of long winter power failures in their town, Mr. Edwards recommended a 60-gallon Aquatank water-storage mattress for under the bed. He also suggested at least 10 boxes of Nuvona emergency food and advised the couple to invest in two electric bicycles, energy-saving lights (“If you want to get jiggy with it, try the LEDs”) and a rooftop windmill for alternate generation.
It’s not just that our ideas remain unrealized when we don’t take ourselves seriously enough, but our whole view of life becomes muddled because we’ve given more power to what others say about the world than to what we see in the world. The Indian sage Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.” Instead of seeking realities expressed by others, we’re better off shaping the one we perceive in the best way possible.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
You forgot one…..the invisible prepper! There are more than enough of these preppers! We have the ability to shop and store without anyone noticing. I don’t need to brag, because when the SHTF, there is going to be enough people that are unprepared and begging. We’ll just state, we are in the same boat…but little do they know. I can’t save the world, only my family.
“I have my own stern claims and perfect circle,” Emerson writes. With this one fell swoop, Emerson tips the scales in favor of his own confessional, and any hope he might have raised for creating a balance to the self’s divinity is lost. Ever since, we’ve been misreading him, or at least misapplying him. As a sad result, it has been the swagger of a man’s walk that makes his measure, and Americans’ right to love ourselves before any other that trumps all.
“Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful. It by no means consists in rushing prematurely to a showy feat that shall catch the eye and satisfy spectators. It is enough if you work in the right direction.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude
When I got into bed that night, I noticed I was feeling a little off. Though I’d technically consumed enough calories, my stomach was still gnawing with hunger, and when I woke up the next morning, I felt energyless. I phoned Dr. Lisa Young, a New York–based nutritionist and adjunct professor at NYU, with a question: Is it really possible to live off freeze-dried food?
But women like Jennifer aren’t preparing for a currency collapse, biowarfare pandemic, or any of the other fantastical global crises that have made America’s prepper subculture synonymous with bunkers, bitcoin, and Infowars conspiracy theories. Instead, they view prepping as a lifestyle — one that has very little to do with defending their territory from hostile invaders and everything to do with the more quotidian business of providing for your family and running a home.
While an inordinate amount of commentary and focus is put on so-called “Doomsday” or Apocalyptic preparedness, in reality this is, or should be, a very minor to non-existent concern for Preppers. Truly, Preppers focus much more on being prepared for things that will more likely be an issue – such as the family bread-winner losing their job, passing away or being incapacitated. Other primary concerns for Preppers are: death or serious illness/injury to a family member, all-consuming house fire, flooding or other natural and man-made disasters. Our current economic environment makes the potential impact of some of these things even more likely. Indeed, the economic stability of their country is of a huge concern to Preppers because of what it would mean for, not just themselves, but the rest of the country if a severe economic crisis were to occur.
What programs like Doomsday Preppers have accomplished, or at least contributed to, is turning sometimes well-informed, sometimes totally unwarranted paranoia into a booming prepper-industrial complex. Each year, swap meets pack hundreds of convention centers and fairgrounds across the nation—they’re like camping shows with a dose of military surplus and hands-on instructional sessions. The September 2017 Kansas City Survival Expo & Gun Show, for instance, had tips on seed saving, “Overcoming 900 Health Diseases” and “A Devastating Street Self-Defense System.” The latter was taught by Norman Cantwell, who inspired Patrick Swayze’s character in Roadhouse. You get the feeling that he and Steven Seagal would be friends.
Hate to break it to you, but your dog probably has a better chance of making it through a total societal collapse than you do. A quick Internet search of "dog survives" lists everything from drowning to being shot, from bear attacks to war -- whereas the closest you've ever come to "surviving disaster" is getting your wisdom teeth pulled, and even then it was only with the help of a cadre of trained medical professionals and a carton of the strongest painkillers on Earth.
Although he had a cold when we met at his office in Harlem, Dr. Redlener was a soothing presence — bearded, erudite and open to the notion that ordinary people have a central role in emergency preparedness. The government, he told me, reacted decisively after 9/11, establishing the Department of Homeland Security, so why shouldn’t everyday citizens react?
