Me and a Prepper friend of mine were talking prepping last night while we were out having a couple of beers. My friend Ned is a pretty serious prepper and very savvy too. He basically lives by the book The Backyard Homestead. He lives on an orchard that he maintains, grows a lot of his own food, has chickens and some other small livestock, he’s got a well and solar set up and even makes his own wine and beer (not that you’d want to drink it, sorry Ned keep working on those recipes). He’s also an army vet and knows a lot about security, firearms, etc… We were out with another friend named Dave who is pretty much the opposite of Ned. This guy has nothing stored, very little knowledge about survival, and hasn’t fired a gun in his life. I doubt that Dave even has an extra battery for his nose hair trimmer, which I might add he could stand to use a little more often. And I can say that freely because he probably won’t read this. Ha! Dave’s survival plan basically involves coming to my house with his hat in his hands.
Dave often gets stuck having to listen to Ned and I when we get into one of our many rants about prepping. The subject is finally starting to interest him as the more in detail we get the more he realizes how screwed he would be if a disaster did hit. I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past that we live smack dab in the middle of earthquake country so we do have a very real looming threat.
So as we pull Dave into the conversation of course his first question is how to get started. Seeing how far ahead Ned and I are must make the idea of pulling together all that a prepper needs pretty daunting. I brought up Thoreau’s earlier article 7 Ways To Get Serious About Prepping as a good resource but knowing he’s more likely to watch the basketball game than do any reading I figured Ned and I could give him a crash course. While Thoreau’s article talked about getting serious I felt like Dave just needed the introductory version. Prepping 101.
First question for Dave. ”How much food do you keep on hand?” Answer, “Barely enough to last a few days.” Seriously? The guy has two kids! I told him step one was to get enough food and water to last at least two weeks. There’s many ways to go about it but for the beginner/lazy prepper the best option is probably to stop at Safeway and pick up a cart of food. Think pasta, rice, canned meats, canned veggies, Hormel chili, stuff like that. Cheap, easy to prepare, lots of calories. Even a case of Spagetti-O’s would be better than nothing. As we’ve discussed here in the past you’re not going to make it long-term without the correct balance of nutrients but anyone could go a couple weeks eating canned chili, tuna, soup, and pasta and be just fine. Or simply go online and order up a bucket of freeze dried food. Generally one of these buckets will cost you about $2.15 per serving. For Dave and his two kids that’s about $20 per day total. A little pricey compared to what you could pick up at the supermarket but when you factor in the balanced nutrition these meals provide plus their shelf life and how easy they make getting your food storage quickly taken care of it’s probably worth it.
Water is trickier than food, as we discuss here regularly. For someone like Dave I recommend starting out by picking up a case of bottled water or one of those five gallon jugs with the spicket on the side every time they stop at the store. Do that for a couple of weeks and you should have a decent supply of water to get you through a minor disaster.
Our next question was related to first-aid. ”Do you have any first-aid supplies?” It was quickly apparent that the extent of Dave’s medical supplies was a half full box of Dora The Explorer Band-Aids. Ugh. Here again you have the same two options as with food. You can go to the supermarket or pharmacy and load up on gauze, tape, bandages, neosporin, and OTC meds or you can buy a ready made kit online. While I’m not a fan of most of the first-aid kits out there they are certainly better than nothing and usually contain a manual that could prove helpful.
If we can actually get Dave to get past these initial steps of becoming self sufficient and prepared for an emergency then maybe we’ll move on to things like emergency shelter, heating, lights, bug out bags, firearms, training, communication, food preparation, sanitation, and the dozens of other things you need to be truly prepared. For now at least we’ve got one more family that can feed itself for more than two days without stopping off at the supermarket.
~Butch
