Hi, I’m your friendly neighborhood prepper mom.
I don’t give a lot of details about myself and my family, for the same reason that a lot of other preppers don’t. Op-sec. Operational security.
If there is a long-term SHTF situation, if it drags on for months or forever, if the rule of law collapses and grocery stores run out of food…people get desperate.
And if someone’s been talking about all the food and pew-pews and freedom seeds they have stored, that’s the house that desperate people are going to hit up first. It’s all well and good to say we’re armed and could defend ourselves, but we can’t defend ourselves against hundreds of people. Most people can’t, even well-stocked preppers.
So a big part of prepping is not advertising what you have, and not presenting an attractive target.
Why I Started Prepping
I started prepping in 2004, when there were 4 hurricanes in Florida. When the first hurricane was predicted, I, like all the other sheeple, rushed to the grocery story to stock up on bottled water, candles, matches, batteries and flashlights, and canned food.
The shelves were empty by the time I arrived. People were angry and hostile and stressed. And I realized what a serious dumbass I was to be trying to buy emergency supplies right before a hurricane hit. I don’t want to get in a fight with someone over the last can of ravioli. I also don’t want to show up too late – like I did – and find that everything I’m looking for is gone…leaving my family in the dark.
After that hurricane passed through, we were immediately whammed by three more.
So I started shopping for essentials, and doing my research, to make sure I’d never be in that situation again. I calculated how much food and water each family member would need per day. One of my children has a medical condition; I paid out of pocket to get an extra months’ supply of medication.
After that, when a storm is predicted, I don’t even bother going to the store. I don’t want to be anywhere near a store at a time when people are angry and stressed out.
So, Florida taught me everything I need to know, right?
Not exactly.
A few years after the Florida hurricane season, my family and I moved to New England. We were renting a house and we lost power. We are in a rural area and the road was snowed in and we couldn’t drive anywhere. That was cool, because we had tons of dehydrated food, and a wood stove, and wood. So we were all set, right?
Wrong. Dehydrated food requires a lot of water. We had just moved and I hadn’t restocked my water supply sufficiently. And it hadn’t even occurred to me that when you lose power, you no longer have running water.
I also learned that boiling snow is an extremely inefficient way to get water.
After that experience, I really upped my prepping game. Water storage, water filtration devices, water bobs for the bathtub…I am all set next time this happens. I joined prepper forums, I made friends with preppers, I read books, I took courses, and I am now much more confident in my ability to deal with both short term and long term disasters.
I also bought a house with a whole-house generator, but in a long term SHTF situation when the propane runs out, the generator will stop working, so I consider that a short-term prep. It’s been well worth it, and we end up benefitting from that generator several times a year, sometimes for days on end. It’s a luxury, though, I don’t rely on it completely. We now live next to a water source, and I have the ability to filter and sterilize that water, so as long as my family can bug in, we’re all set.
My purpose in creating this website is to make sure that you and your family are also all set for any type of emergency, from a weather event, to a terrorist attack which disables the grid short- term, to some kind of event that knocks our country back to the stone-age.