13 Basic steps how to begin with prepping

13 Basic steps how to begin with prepping

Many people are already preppers and don’t even realize it. If you have medical insurance, car insurance, house insurance, first-aid kid in the house,  deep freezer in the basement or jerry can with fuel for your car in the garage you are already acting as prepper.

Prepping is activity of person who prepare himself or his family in advance for various crisis situations. This person believe if he will stock pile in advance water, food and other commodities, if he will learn, train and practice various skills he will be ready and able to overcome various disasters scenarios without  any significant damage or lost of the life.

Prepper’s goal is to become self-sufficient.

Prepping is lifestyle.

The best way to start with prepping is to follow some basic steps.

 

1.    Keep low profile

Do not tell anybody about your decision to be a prepper. If you start to talk about your idea in this phase you can burn yourself. You do not have enough strong arguments to other side and you will get confused and others start to laugh of you. Later on when you get more information about prepping you can slowly start to inform about your idea your partner/spouse or close family. Step by step collect and prepare your logical arguments, real solid facts and slowly reveal your intention.

 

2.    Make your homework - research

Make research about prepping. Determine what is your main purpose to be a prepper and reasons to start prepping.

May be your reasons for start with prepping are the most prosaic like:  

·       Job loss

·       Car accident

·       House fire

·       Power outages

·       Economic turmoil

·       Society decline

Everybody has different reason. 

Determine other aspects from your location which may have influence on your preparedness strategy:

·       Consider geographic and climate of your region and the most likely natural events in your area (wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, ice storms, snow calamity,  flooding,  tsunami, dust storms, etc)

·       Population density

·       Urban – Rural conditions

·       Availability of natural resources – water, food – wild animals, wild edible

·       Potential Bug Out location availability

·       Public fallout shelter nearby

·       Nuclear power plant nearby

·       Large dam nearby

·       Hospital nearby

·       Military installation nearby

·       Consider political,  economic and social situation

 

3.    Set up your budget

You have to know how much money you are able to spent every month without ruining your bank account.  Definitely you should start with coupons, discount codes and buying with bulk discount.  There are many web pages with long list of coupons for almost everything.

Another simple step is routine shopping on sales. Take advantage of sales or buy one get one frees and buy an extra can/bag or two while you are shopping. Remember popular prepper slogan: One is zero and two is one. If you’ll get into the habit of buying one extra whenever you find the right deal, you’ll be surprised how quickly your emergency stockpile will build up.

Prioritize your purchases. Plan your time and focus on the most pressing things first.

 

4.    Strategic long term plan, to do list and final check-list

Before you start to create your new preparedness plan the first step will be to make detailed inventory in your house.  May be you will be surprised how many things you already have. Consider what you have and what you need. According your real state you can begin create your plan what to buy next.

Of course second criterion will be your budget. Another criterion for your plan will be the time. If you budged allow you to spend 50 bucks every month your plan to reach goal will be much longer as if your budget for monthly expenses will be much higher.

Next will be  the level of preparedness which you want to reach.  And last one will be your willing to continue work on your plan.

Your plan can consists of high priority tasks and long time tasks. You can divide your plan to more phases.

1st phase  “MINIMAL” can consists – collecting basic supply, equipment and gears which are covering just minimal requirements for survival.

2nd phase “OPTIMAL” can consists advanced supply, equipment, tools and gears, new skills and knowledge which they help you much easy overcome any disaster.

3rd phase “IDEAL” will help you to deal any disaster with mental and physical comfort.

Short explanation how phases work from point of view on security.  In the 1st phase “MINIMAL”  I will have just one gun with couple magazines.

If I reach 2nd phase “OPTIMAL” I will have gun and rifle. I will attend local range with defense shooting course.

In the 3rd phase “IDEAL”  I will have gun, rifle and shotgun. I can add to my weapons special equipment  -  red dot aim, night vision, silencer etc. I will attend local range with special close combat course.

In the last phase I can buy more ammunition or magazines or learn how to reload ammunition.

planning 

For example my preparedness plan has 4 phases. First three phases are phases of preparing and last phase is finalizing phase.  

My first phase starts at 2016 and suppose to end at the end of the year 2021. This phase consist of 316 tasks and 15 skills must learn. Task in this plan is defined as getting exact new item, supply or gear, tools etc.  So far I finished 262 tasks and learned 12 skills. I need to finish 54 tasks and learn 3 more skill to the end of this year. The 1st phase “Minimal” – will take 5 years and cost me so far around 5000 euros.

My 2nd phase has 127 tasks and 30 skills. You can see this phase has less tasks and more skills to learn.  This phase is planned for 3 years.

3rd phase has of 82 tasks and 30 skills.  This phase is planned also for 3 years. This is also phase when I should have all supply, gear and tools.

Last Final phase consists only 30 skills to learn. This phase is planned also for 3 years.

After 11 years of collecting and 14 years of learning I should have all required tools and minimum 100 useful skills for SHTF.

I believe it will not be the end of my preparedness because prepping isn’t just a set it and forget it game. You need to constantly be upgrading, updating, charging, rotating and learning.

5.    Water and Food supply

Water is at the top of the prepper supply list. You can only survive three days without water.

Start to stockpile water, nonperishable food and can food. On the beginning make your supply for 2 weeks.  Later expand to 1 month, 3 moths or 6 months.

Your goal should be water supply for 3 months, non-perishable food for minimum 6 months and raw cereals (wheat, rye, rice etc.)  minimum for 1 year. 

Buy food only what you eat, store and rotate proper way so the oldest is used first.

Learn how to collect rain water, how to clean water with commercial filters or home made filters, find or make alternative source of drinking water. Learn long–term water storage basics.

 

6.    Gear, tools and equipment.

Always test all new gear and tools you buy. Prefer tools off the grid. Learn how to use them.  Do not buy overpriced items. Avoid cheap stuff.

List of typical preps items:

·       Water, containers, purifying tablets, filters

·       Food, containers, storage

·       Health

·       Hygiene

·       Backup power and energy, light

·       Weapons, ammunition

·       House and BoL protection and security

·       Transportation

·       Navigation

·       Communication

·       Tools & Equipment

·       Clothes and shoes

·       Cookware

One advice. Choose productive hobbies and activities. Collecting old  stamps is beautiful hobby but not very useful for preppers. Sports and any working activities in the nature are much useful for preppers. You will have several profits from them. They will give you physical strength and will keep you in the shape,  knowledge and  many tools, gears and clothes for specific sport or activities.

I will mention only few of them here:  Martial arts, walking, running, bicycling, kayaking, rafting, trekking, climbing, swimming, camping, fishing, hunting, shooting, archery, farming, breeding farm animals, horse riding,  gardening,  etc.

Everybody who is building own house will get step by step life time experiences and knowledge in various field of construction business. Here you can gain invaluable experience how to use proper way construction tools and equipment, right practices and procedures.

 

7.    Make  disaster plan

Make disaster plan and drills for specific scenarios – fire, power outage, water out, flood, etc.

Find and establish your Bug Out Location (BOL).

Plan, prepare and dig in caches around your house and BOL.

Develop a communications and transportation plan,  evacuation plan, emergency contact list – phone book, address book. Make a binder of print out copies of official documents, ID’s, licenses, certificates, family members photos, etc. Prepare quick check-lists, set up meeting points for you family or close group members.  Plan, test and practise evacuation roads in various season, weather conditions, day/night time, prepare plan B, C, D...in case plan A is not working. Keep your vehicle ready and fully equipped. 

8.    Create survival kits, BOB etc.

EDC

You should have EDC kit. Every Day Carry kit is basic little kit that you can carry with you all times. Everybody has different requirements for his EDC kit.  Kit can consists of various items. Usually you will find in the kit - pocket knife, mini flashlight, some fire starter or lighter, little multi tool, tactical pen or pepper spray and some band-aids or pills.  Some preppers carry also gun or other items for survival depends on their living conditions and situation.

 

BOB

Another popular thing among preppers is BOB (Bug Out Bag) also known as a 72-hour bag. This bag consists survival gear, off grid tools and other necessary items for person which is forced to go out from house due to various reasons and survive at least for 3 days.

 

GHB

A Get Home Bag (GHB) is bag which will help you safely make your way home during or in the aftermath of a disaster – when roads are blocked, rubble and debris is in the streets or public transportation is not working.  GHB is usually smaller and lighter then BOB. GHB  should also look like a standard student backpack, messenger bag, or similar. You don’t want any backpacker-style packs or camo bags as these would draw attention.

 

BOV

Bug Out Vehicle (BOV) is equipped and special prepared vehicle in advance of disaster and ready to live at moment’s notice.

 

SURVIVAL KIT

Preppers, survivalists, tourists, hunters and other people use little survival kits. The name of the kit, its size, shape, material or color doesn’t matter so much. The most important is what is inside. Each survival kit must contains items from these fields:

·       Fire

·       Light

·       Navigation

·       Communication

·       Tools

·       Medical/Hygiene

Of course if you will create “Urban”Survival Kit you do not need fishing kit and others items exactly predetermined for using in nature only and vice versa what is consists in your Urban survival kit isn’t useful for “Wilderness” survival kit.

 

9.    Learn, train and practice various skills

Learn and train various skills, read books, manuals, guides, survival/prepper’s blogs, forums, watch survival and post apocalyptic movies, prepper’s videos, practice home  repairs, understand and learn from the past, recent wars, conflicts, depression, etc.

Monitor social media with post and hashtags about prepping, use specific search keywords at Google.

Create your own prepper library with useful books, manuals, guides, and instructional videos.

 

10.  Keep yourself fit

Build and maintain your physical and mental toughness. Do exercise regularly, do sports, run.  Train any of martial arts. You do not need to be black belt master. Just practise basic self defense routine regularly.

Eat healthy food. Watch your weight. Avoid alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.

Perform regular medical and dentist exam every year. Take Red Cross course and learn how to provide first aid.

 

11.  Know your neighbor, create group

Get to know your neighbors well and have very good relations with them. Create your own closed group or community of preppers, make friends with like-minded people. Look for people with certain knowledge and abilities as:

·       Soldier, policeman

·       Farmer

·       Handyman  - electrician, plumber, carpenter, bricklayer, car mechanic

·       Doctor, surgeon, nurse 

·       Herbalist

·       Cook, butcher

·       Leader – negotiation, bartering

·       Blacksmiths – ammunition reloading, weapons

·       Radio communication specialist

Get to know your surroundings perfectly and remember what you can use from each place.  Localize natural sources of water - lake, river, creek, pond etc., firing wood, building material etc.

But do not forget - keep low profile.

 

12. Stay aware

Constantly monitor the local and national news sources. Keep abreast of current events and the effect they may have on you. Everything from rough weather heading your way to heightened tensions in the Middle East to an outburst of solar activity can impact your life.

 

13. Financial independence

If you are in debt when the shit hits the fan, don't expect all your debt to just be wiped out. Try to get your debt paid off ASAP so you're not a slave to anyone.

So, before you go sinking a bunch of money into food and gear preps, get your debt paid down first. Make yourself free.

 

Got some other ways to begin prepping that you’d like to share? Leave a comment below and help the rest of learn from your creativity.

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