You do not want to just buy all your food and supplies with a credit card. Look for ways to lower your bills until you have some money left over for preps. A common occurrence after any disaster is a breakdown in everyday services and supplies. Whether it is a hurricane, wildfires, earthquakes, or manmade events like riots and civil unrest, stores are often closed, and simply reaching them can be difficult if not impossible. Complicating matters is hoarding either before an imminent disaster like a forecasted hurricane, or hoarding after the event when people feel the need to buy as much as they can. The result is that common goods become unavailable, and that includes food.
In most instances, people have enough food on hand to get through at least a week. The end of the week may result in some meager meals, but nobody is starving. The good news is that most disasters do not last much longer than that, and even during severe disasters, essential services like grocery stores can remain open, but often bare or little provided. The real concern is related to wide-spread and long-term disasters that never seem to end. Many agencies on a local, state, and federal level are set up to provide aid and assistance to people in desperate situations, but as FEMA demonstrated during Hurricane Katrina, even the largest systems and designs can fail.
In the event of a future disaster that has long and wide effects, it’s possible that there will simply be too many people to support. At times like those, most people will be on their own until some semblance of normalcy returns. It is a good reason to think beyond the standard FEMA recommendation of 72-hours of survival rations and prepare for a duration of up to 30 days. It may seem unlikely that any single event could result in such an extreme need for preparedness, but quite often multiple disasters occur at the same time. Hurricane IDA striking the gulf coast in the midst of the COVID pandemic is a good example. Power outages were widespread in addition to flooding and an overwhelmed medical system. This was then followed by a heat wave in a broad region of more than 1 million people without electric power. At that point, a 30-day time frame starts to feel like a best case scenario. Lack of personal preparedness was an obvious factor as many people desperately searched for food only days after the hurricane struck. Putting together a 30-day food supply can be done relatively inexpensively and in a short period of time. Most of us shop for groceries once a week and buy enough to make it to next week’s shopping trip. It is easy to assume you could just stock up for 4 weeks instead of one week and you would be done with your 30-day food supply. And in fact, it just might be that easy. But like so many things, there are some factors to think about if you are in a situation where you’re on your own with few resources over 30 days.
If you are totally dependent on stored food it most likely means a severe disaster has occurred. Many severe disasters result in power outages and even an outage lasting only a day could compromise any refrigerated or frozen foods. You need to think about storing foods that don’t require refrigeration or freezing to make it through the month. Eat what you store and store what you eat, that is the mantra of people who store food for the long-term. The easiest way to do that is to store your 30 days of food close to the kitchen. The only challenge is that now you have to think about finding the storage space in your kitchen cupboards and pantries to keep cycling through a large stock of 4-weeks’ worth of food. Take the time to do it, unless you enjoy running up and down to the basement every day. A nearby closet is another option.
Prepping is something that should be done slowly and steadily. Oftentimes there are survival items you think you need, then later you find out there is a better deal somewhere or that you already own a suitable substitute. So try to be patient. Items you may already own and something you can begin to buy in bulk are the following.
Do not forget about medications and first aid items. Most of these items a common househod already has and may need to be stocked frequently. Whem you hit your local grocery store, remember to buy duplicates of these items to store in a go-bag or first-aid trauma bag along with the items stocked in your medicine cabinet.
Water is technically more important than food, and you are going to go through it faster than you think. You do not have to just buy bottled water. You can collect your own water and store it in collapsible containers or barrels for long periods of time in your garage or basement. Every drop of water you have ever drunk, swam in, bathed in, or watered your plants with was once a drop of rain falling from a cloud. Of course, those drops of water were probably purified at your local water treatment plant. But what if the treatment plant shuts down due to a major disaster? Is it safe to harvest rainwater and drink it? The answer is yes, but you have to do it right. Instead of placing a thousand cups out in a rainstorm, you should build your very own rainwater harvesting system. This system collects rain and stores it safely for you to drink at your convenience. For sustainability and economic purposes, harvesting rainwater is an ability any long-term prepper should have. However, there are more considerations than you might expect.
Most people do not realize that naturally collected rainwater is not as pure as it looks. Sure, it falls from the sky into whatever contraption you use to collect it, but contaminants and germs are collected as well. This is especially true if the water is pouring off of some other surface before filling up your container. Roofs have many things sitting on their surfaces that are not safe to drink, such as animal fecal matter. You must also be aware that some roofs may have traces of chemicals or other poisonous substances such as asbestos on them, so any water collected from the roof is most likely contaminated. And if you live in a highly-populated area, or even near one, your rainwater may become contaminated before it has the opportunity to hit any surface. This is due to the pollution in the air. In some cases, environmental pollutants can be dissolved into the rainwater as it is falling. So as you can see, there are many ways for naturally collected rainwater to become contaminated, and it surely will be unless preventative measures are taken. Although treating water with iodine can be safely done when you are camping, it is not the best treatment for rainwater. Iodine does not treat or make your collected rainwater safe for consumption if the water has been contaminated with chemicals. You will also want to make sure your collected water does not remain standing long enough for mosquitos to turn it into a breeding ground. All this is why I recommend you use collected rainwater for purposes other than consumption, such as watering your garden or flushing your toilet. I also do not recommend rainwater if you are ill or have a weak immune system. If your main purpose for collecting rainwater is to drink it, then you should either boil it first or use a good water filtration system.
The laws and regulations regarding the collection of rainwater vary from state to state, with some being stricter than others. Before you begin making plans to collect rainwater, you should first check your local laws. States such as Texas, Rhode Island, and Virginia are friendly to the idea of locals collecting rainwater and even offer tax exemptions for those who purchase equipment. Other states will allow the collection of rainwater under strict conditions.
Once you have decided harvesting rainwater is for you and you’ve checked the local laws, you will need to figure out how much water you and your family will need. There are a number of factors to consider, and a few methods to choose from. First, become familiar with the local average rainfall charts. You will need to know both the total average rainfall and the months which receive the most and least rain. Are you hoping to completely sustain yourself on rainwater? Are you wanting to irrigate and supply water for homestead animals as well? Or are you merely providing a supplemental supply in case of emergencies? Your answers will determine how much water storage you will need.
Once you have determined your water needs, you can use a quarterly drought system as a rough estimate for how much you need to store. If your area goes for as long as 3 months much without rain (as many summertime locales do), you will need a supply of water for that entire quarter. Calculate how much water you and your family use on a month-to-month basis and build your rainwater storage accordingly.
Do not store water in old milk jugs, it is so tempting and it seems like a good idea at the time, but it will end in disaster. It is hard to wash out all the milk residue which means you could end up with harmful bacteria growing in you water. Also, the plastic is not hardy and will eventually break down, creating a big mess.
Finding a great deal on a case of canned spinach may seem like a great way to fill the shelves in your pantry, but if your family refuses to eat it, you will have wasted time, money, and space. It is nice to find a great deal, but if it does not fit your family, pass on it and wait for the next one. There is this idea that a food pantry must be loaded with canned foods and nothing else. You need to have a variety of canned, dry, and freeze-dried foods in order to diversify your diet. Otherwise you will get bored with canned food, and all that extra sodium will be bad for your health.
The term “survival food” is actually really generic. What are we talking about surviving through? Is the survival food supposed to get us through a 3 day blizzard? Or how about a month-long power outage? Or what if there is a disaster that causes us to flee from our homes and Bug Out in the wilderness? Each of these situations is going to require different types of survival foods. I want to address the types of survival foods you should be stockpiling based on the type of disaster.
Short term survival foods, these are the most common types of disasters that we come up against. They include situations like blizzards where you are trapped in your home and unable to go grocery shopping. They also include short term power outages. You will not need a lot of survival food for these situations, especially because you will be able to eat through your regular food supply (and will especially have to hurry to consume those frozen foods if the grid goes down).
You will notice that I didn’t include some of the “obvious” survival foods on this list, like dry beans, pasta, and rice. The reason for this is that they take a really long time to cook. Even with presoaking, you will still need to cook dry beans for about an hour. Rice and pasta are a bit better, but even they take a long time to cook. In an emergency situation, you probably will not have power for cooking. On top of that, cooking with fire is not always safe after an emergency. For example, during earthquakes, it is common for gas leaks to occur. You should not light any fire if you suspect a gas leak.
Long term disaster survival food, these are situations that hopefully will never occur, but you will want to be prepared for them in case they do. For example, if there is an EMP attack or nuclear disaster, we might be forced to hunker down in our homes (bug in) for over a month. In these situations, our survival food requirements will drastically change.
Many of the foods on this list are freeze dried. These foods can last for 25+ years when properly packaged. Freeze dried foods also retain their nutrients and taste great.
Bug out survival food, there are some disaster scenarios that would cause us to flee our homes and bug out in the wilderness. You definitely do not want to be lugging around heavy cans of food in your go-bag. Caloric density is incredibly important here. You will not have a lot of room in your bag, so limit the food you bring. More important is water, you can go a month without food but only 3 days without water.
Use sturdy shelves for your storage. Those flimsy, particleboard shelves may be inexpensive, but they will not hold up long when you start piling bags of beans and cases of canned goods on them. Your best option would be wire shelving. It is sturdy and can tolerate more weight.
Do not put all your supplies and preps in one place. You never know when disaster will strike. Your entire food storage could be wiped out in the blink of an eye. Place some caches around the area where you live, keep a bug out bag in every vehicle, and if possible, keep some supplies at your bug out location.
Hide valuables in plain sight, or in obvious places where a would be thief would not think to look. Lock your preps away behind secure doors and take care not to reveal what you have to friends or family. You may even wish to disguise your hiding places. Decorative chests and wicker baskets may look ornamental to the visitor,but they make nifty hiding spots for your preps. Burglars will make swift entries and exits, searching for visible items to steal while you are away. They may even attempt to break in while you are at home.
To protect your belongings from these sneaky intruders, make sure to hide your valuables in a place that is easily accessible to you, but hidden from the casual glance. Looters move in packs, and will not hesitate to ransack your home, searching for anything of value that they can snatch and make off with. You will need tighter security to protect your stockpile from these bandits. Store your valuables in less accessible parts of your home that are well hidden and difficult to locate.
There are a few easy ways to store bulk foodstuffs away from prying eyes.
You do not want to advertise what you have. If and when disaster strikes, you will have a line of people at your door, and you will not be able to help them all. So keep your plans within the family and a select group of trusted individuals.
Keep your friends and enemies close. When life threatening disasters take place, human nature gives way to its most primal instincts. Friendships, lifelong companionship, and civilized relations are quickly forgotten and replaced with a desperate need to survive. In times like these, expect anyone, including your friendly, church going neighbor, or even your own family members, to turn on you out of desperation. Your best friend may not hesitate to steal food from your children in order to feed their own. Pleasantries are quickly trumped by the will to live, a powerful psychological force that drives human existence. Friends, acquaintances, neighbors and family members typically have easy access to your home and may have knowledge of where you keep important items.
They may be your best friend before the onset of a cataclysmic event, but once things take a turn for the worst, they will raid your stockpile before you get a chance to invite them in for tea.
Many preppers are going to find themselves completely exhausted after just one day of disaster. Hiking from place to place, carrying supplies back and forth, repairing damaged roofs or windows, etc. All if it will wear you out fast if you are not in shape. It is easier to get in shape than you think. A half hour of power walking a day will make a huge difference.
Cardio, there is a movie called Zombieland about what happens to a group of people after zombies kill off over 99% of the population. The main character has a list of rules that help keep him alive. And rule number 1 is cardio. In Zombieland, it is so he can outrun zombies. There are many things you might have to outrun: an invading army, a mob of citizens, a gang of criminals, etc. Whatever happens, you do not want your legs, lungs, and heart to keep you from getting away. Cardio is not just jogging for hours at a time. Interval training, where you intersperse short bursts of intense exercise and periods of rest, is enough.
Strength, lifting a fallen beam off of a loved is not the only scenario where you might need some great strength. You might have to haul buckets of water back and forth from a pond, carry firewood for several miles, move your food and supplies to a safer location, clear away debris, or even out wrestle a bandit. It is not necessary to become a bodybuilder. In fact, most of your strength training can be done from home with a pair of dumbbells. I am not going to recommend a specific exercise routine here, but consider getting a trainer or buying a book on strength training.
Flexibility, when you go from sitting in an office chair all day to working around the clock scrounging for water and supplies in the city, you will discover dozens of joints and muscles you did not know you had. If you do not want to be stiff and in pain when the time comes, then go ahead and start doing some stretching exercises every day. Get to where touching your toes is a piece of cake. Better yet, take a yoga class. There is no better way to improve flexibility and work out all the small muscles that do not normally get used. Another option is to kill two birds with one stone by improving flexibility and cardio at the same time with sports such as tennis, racquetball, basketball, or swimming.
Diet, if you cannot eat less, at least eat healthily. If the end of the world as we know it arrives, people with the lowest body fat percentage will starve to death first. The people on the other end of the spectrum, however, will die next because their bodies will not be able to handle the stress. Ideally, you want to be on the upper end of the normal BMI range that way you will still be in good shape but also have some fat to live off of when food is in short supply. The easiest way to achieve this is to exercise every day and only eat when you are hungry. (How can you tell whether you are actually hungry or just bored? When you are actually hungry, even healthy food looks appetizing.) But when you eat, focus on fruits, vegetables, meats, and some dairy. Whole grains are good, too, but too much will make weight loss impossible. A good rule of thumb is to stay on the outside edge of the grocery store and avoid going up and down the isles.
I am not saying you should not have guns for self defense, but you want to do your best to avoid confrontation. Learn how to be stealthy and avoid drawing attention to yourself. Your guns cannot protect you from being shot by others who have guns.
Blending in, in many ways, is an art form. It requires you to manipulate and play with the perceptions of others, and there is no single best way to go about it. Most of the information we list here will help you become nondescript, but there are indeed many ways to blend in, depending on the situation or scenario. A good example of this is simply donning some construction vests, most often you are able to wander into several locations without being challenged. While not necessarily discreet, in a emergency scenario, high-vis is easily overlooked.
The trick is in understanding how the brain works when identifying and scanning people. People will quickly notice the basics of what they see, and will need to make a direct effort to begin to pick out details. Change blindness is a phenomenon that demonstrates this nicely. You can literally switch people out mid-conversation with only a slight bit of confusion triggering in the other person.
Keeping a low profile is a skill set common to people like social workers, as well as intelligence officers and general overseas stations. There are a ton of resources and tips for avoiding undue attention and confrontation, and most of them will give you roughly the same advice. Most of the basics of blending in really come down to good situational awareness and common sense.
Staying equipped while in a low profile, the equipment you can carry with you is naturally limited to items you can carry discreetly or concealed. Most EDC items can be carried discreetly, though you should spend extra time ensuring it stays hidden and concealed. Practice wearing gear and weapons and quickly accessing them while wearing regular clothes and utilizing standard pockets. Those tactical khaki pants are often a big warning sign to anyone who knows what they are looking at. Get used to wearing a weapon under your armor in the small of your hip and wear clothes that ensure it stays hidden.
Many people forget that disasters do not wait for you to get home. They can also happen when you are at work, school, or elsewhere. Do you have a plan for getting home, or a place to meet with the rest of your family? In a disaster, the first 72 hours are critical. If you wait for government help, you could be waiting for days or even weeks. But if you take matters into your own hands and get home fast, you stand a much better chance of surviving. Waiting for government help is not a wise strategy. Instead, you need to be prepared to take care of yourself and your loved ones. That means having a bug out bag packed and ready to go, knowing how to use survival skills, and having a plan for getting home fast.
But if you find yourself in the middle of a true disaster, your first priority should be to get out of immediate danger. Once you are safe, then you can start thinking about getting home. If you are caught in the middle of a city when a large earthquake hits, for example, your first priority should be to find shelter and ride out the aftershocks. Once it is safe to leave, your best bet may be to walk, since roads and bridges could be damaged or blocked. If you are able to make it to public transportation, that may be faster, but it could also be more crowded and dangerous. In any case, getting home fast after the SHTF is all about staying safe first and foremost.
Identify choke points, in a grid-down or SHTF scenario, one of the most important things you can do is get home as fast as possible. Depending on where you live, this could mean navigating through a city or rural area that has been plunged into chaos. To give yourself the best chance of getting home safely, it is important to identify choke points along your route in advance. A choke point is any location where there is potential for congestion or violence. This could be a major intersection, a bridge, or even a stretch of empty highway. By identifying choke points in advance, you can develop a plan for avoiding them if necessary. In some cases, this might mean taking a longer but more direct route. In others, it might mean finding an alternative route that avoids the choke point entirely.
Plan out the fastest routes ahead of time, the best way to make sure you can get home quickly is to plan out the fastest routes ahead of time. Familiarize yourself with the terrain and find the shortest, most direct path home. Make sure to take into account any obstacles that might slow you down, such as rivers or steep hills. And always have a backup plan in case your primary route is blocked.
Before you start running towards your loved ones, it is important to take a moment to check for injury or exposure. If you have been wounded, it is essential to stop the bleeding and get medical attention as soon as possible. Likewise, if you have been exposed to hazardous materials, it is important to decontaminate yourself before coming into contact with others.
Keep your phone charged, in an emergency situation, your phone will be one of your most valuable assets when there is still a signal. Use it sparingly to conserve battery life, but make sure to keep it charged in case you need to make a call or use GPS. If possible, invest in a portable charger so you can keep your phone charged on the go.
Keep supplies in your vehicle, in an emergency, every minute counts. If you find yourself trying to get home fast when the SHTF, you will be glad you kept supplies in your vehicle. Here are a few essential items to keep on hand.
Some people just assume they will have to bug out, while others assume they will be able to bug in. But you do not know what is going to happen. You have to have a plan A and a plan B. Every prepper needs a backup plan to their backup plan. Do not assume your tools will work properly when you need them to. You have to try them out. Also, don not just store several of the same tool because if that tool ends up not working for you, you might need a different type of tool. Carry redundant capability, not redundant gear.
Yes, technically it could be, but odds are it is not. And if you always think it is, then you are liable to panic and make bad decisions. Be prepared, but enjoy all that life has to offer. Do not become so focused on prepping for doomsday that you forget to enjoy what you have today. Many of my preps have alternatives that are fun for my family. Converting a crawl space into a DIY shelter and digging a underground bunker for tornadoes is practical, but in the time it is not being used, it is a cool fort or place to unwind.
Remember, most of these points are made with practicality and multi-function in mind. No one will survive the worst possible scenario, the goal is to survive the 99% of things before that. To truly prep for SNAFU is to embody the namesake of this article. To make every fucked up situation a normal one. To stabilize and maintain. Because once it gets worse, not even the best preps can prevent mental fatigue and loss of hope.