I’m always questioning my preps. What am I prepping for? To what level? What do I need to survive that? Then there is the prioritisation and the pull on your lmited resources, time and financial. All for something that could come to naught or could actually end up being less of an issue.
In reality though we have to consider ther worse case and, if possible, that is what we have to prepare for if we can. Bearing in mind not all our worse case scenarios are survivable in the long term. Sometimes no matter what you do things don’t work out. Prepping is no guarantee that you will survive. Some situations are worse than others and each one of us is in a different situation that defines our chances of survival. Location, finances, health, property and knowledge base all define our chances with a bit of luck thrown in. Sad for us to think all our prepping may be in vain but we have to consider it.
On the plus side I’m a great believer in that anything you do towards your prepping improves your own individual chances. Doing nothing means no change. However, there are actions that you can take that reduces your chances. You must consider everything you do and sometimes you have no real idea what the results of your actions will be. For example buying that tray of beans from Tesco is going to improve your chances by providing more food your your cache but in a rare situation your neighbour recognises a prepper trait and is round your house when he is snowed in for 10 minutes.
For most of us though we are aware what the repercussions of our actions are. We consider them when we are looking at doing anything and all our thoughts are on reducing the risk, thereby improving our chances of survival. We look at what we can do and do what we can to reduce the risk and avoid those areas where we would increase the risk.
What we are doing is the same as everyone with any common sense does. We are simply buying items in advance. Not long ago it was called a big shop. Meaning a months worth at a time. Of course most do it so they only go shopping once a month, we do it for the same reason but we consider we may never visit a shop again so buy a years worth. They also buy items they hope never to use, such as smoke detectors, we again go that little bit further and buy water filters so we can drink from cow pats. In the scheme of things it is no different to what everyone else does except for the scope and duration, and those force us to handle the requirements differently.
One area where you could say we go overboard is with OPSEC. We keep our heads down about what we do and don’t really talk about it with the ordinary man. The reasons are obvious, we are making sure we can benefit from the sacrifices we make. We don’t want to lose our preps because of loose lips.
The media, the authorities and our work peers have made it very clear. Preppers are selfish and immoral. In this day and age of persecution by media that makes us criminals. We need to learn from criminals. Keep your head down, don’t attract attention and keep your mouth shut.
Those actions alone will increase your chances of surviving significantly more that several trays of beans.
Security is top priority, because if things do go pear shaped badly enough the neighbours will be trying to get in just to get A can of beans let alone a tray full along with anything else. The only people who know i have even the tiny amount of stores that i have are people on this site; and yes any of you could be my neighbours !
Mind how you go !
The prepper who gives up his opsec for 15 minutes of of audio visual fame deserves neither opsec nor fame.
I find it absolutely hilarious that journalists and documentary producers dare judge and ridicule the prepper community when events of recent years show the media tapping phones, spying illegally, bribing law officers, printing slanderous and blatently untruthful articles DARE try and lord it over preppers who seek only to best protect their loved ones from troubled times ahead.
you’ve got to remember, Journo’s and “film makers” are NOT doing it to further the prepper movement, they are doing it to get a name for themselves, after all its THEIR name on the credits at the end, so if they can make preppers look stupid they will! OPSEC is the name of the game here, keep shtum and tell NO ONE outside your immediate family (and tell them not to tell anyone else…that includes the kids!), better to be prepared than have 15 minutes of fame and lose all your food stores when the neighbours come knocking after TSHTF ( hey! that neighbour down the road, he’s one of those “preppers”, he’s got food, lets go visit him!)