If you think back to even a decade ago, you’ll remember how non-existent the concept of survival prepping was. Besides the occasional news special about some insane looking mountain man living in isolation while prepping, there wasn’t much else to go on.
But now, prepping is a mainstream activity. In fact, it’s become so popular that experienced preppers have to remind newbies to not gloat about it so much – because that can put a target on them as someone whose home is stocked up with supplies.
We’ve come a long way in that respect, but even more so. There are tons of resources at your disposal to learn with. Manufacturers are not just focusing on military supplies, but now selling products to the average person so that they, too can feel prepared and have peace of mind.
Below, you’ll find eight solid reasons why you should feel comfortable starting your survival prepper journey as early as today. This should give you the confidence you need to actively pursue a plan for your family’s needs.
Mainstream Media Has Made It Acceptable
Millions of Americans in the past gathered around their TV sets to watch shows like 60 Minutes or Dateline (two night-time news shows) where the camera would scan a dense forest and come upon a shack built into the mountainside, hidden among the trees.
A man might emerge – with a beard down to his belly, often looking dishevelled and a little off his rocker. This is what mainstream media, in the past, has presented to us as the optics representing a typical “prepper.”
No wonder no one wanted to be aligned with that type of image. And while there certainly are some people who take things to extremes and live a life where they suspect everyone and everything of wrongdoing to the point they have to isolate from society – that’s not what this movement is really about.
Survival prepping is a strategy where you’re making sure you’re not having to rely on others to protect yourself and your loved ones in the event of an emergency. Whenever emergencies do arise, resources will be limited and it’s helpful to the government and supply chain retailers to have fewer people making big demands on the system.
Photo by Damon On Road on Unsplash
In fact, if you look at Sweden, they’re actively encouraging their citizens to become preppers. Americans are simply doing it on their own – but mainstream media is making it more acceptable, at least.
Instead of highlighting the rare mountain man, they’re showing the real problems people have had in recent years and highlighting suburban moms and dads who are getting ready for any event without being hysterical about things.
And while we shouldn’t have to get mainstream media’s approval for anything we do in life (and we don’t need it), it paves the way for many individuals to feel more at ease taking this route because they know they won’t be ostracized as an outlandish citizen doing something against the norm.
You Can Prepare on Any Budget – Big or Small
Another thing that has made survival prepping easier is that everyone can do it, regardless of their income. From picking up a couple of extra $0.50 cans of vegetables each week at the store to investing in a homesteading property – there are prepping plans for everyone.
If you think about it, you can do this with every aspect of the survival prepping journey. For example, with food – you can take a “grow it yourself” route with a survival garden and look for inexpensive foods like rice, canned goods and other items.
Or, you can spend your money on a year’s worth of survival food supplies that are shipped to your home if you have over a thousand dollars to spend on your prepping. It’s just different for everyone, but not impossible for anyone.
There are some people who shop for supplies at discount stores. For example, you can walk into a dollar store and find more than just some discounted canned goods. They also have things like aspirin and Band-Aids for your first aid kit, candles, lighters, paracord, flashlights, batteries and more.
You can set aside a bit of money to make larger purchases, such as if you want to invest in a generator for when and if the grid goes down. You might have to spend more than you have on hand, but you can still shop smart for better deals.
For example, buy one during Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales – or if you’re buying it from Amazon, look for a better price on Amazon Prime Day. You can also begin looking for items that are not sold through the usual retailers.
You can find items on Facebook Marketplace, on eBay, on Craigslist and other places. Shop at estate sales and garage sales, too. Sign up for Next-door and see who is selling some supplies you may want or need – they don’t have to be new, just in working order.
You might find something like a tent for bugging out, a generator, a dehydration machine, Mason jars for canning, a bug out bag, and many other supplies that will come in handy – and you’ll get a great deal on them!
The Internet Is Loaded with Tips and Strategies to Teach You
One thing preppers didn’t have in years past is the Internet. What knowledge they had was usually passed down from older generations. From growing their own garden to knowing how to raise farm animals or build something, they had to work hard to find information in books or by finding someone to share the details with them.
But now, whatever you want or need to know, you can simply fire up the Internet and tune in to a YouTube channel where they not only talk about how to do something, they show you!
You can see the progression of an entire seed to harvest garden by watching a time-lapse or edited together video that provides you with tips, helpful solutions to any problems (like pests or mould in your garden), and more.
There are also blogs out there where niche leaders in the survival niche (and otherwise) share helpful information. Even if they’re not survival blogs, you can find blogs for specific topics you want to know.
These include blogs on survival topics like gardening (along with canning, dehydration), raising farm animals, financial preparations, woodworking, first aid, camping, and other relevant topics.
What’s even better is that these niche leaders are usually willing to engage with you in a back and forth conversation! So you have a willing mentor at your fingertips online where you can ask questions that haven’t been answered yet.
There are forums dedicated to survival preppers. You can go there and lurk and absorb information or be active and engage with others, helping people or getting the help that you need.
You can ask how to do something and end up with twenty different methods or approaches so that you can pick a strategy (or product) that works best for you and your family (and budget).
Another benefit for having the Internet at your fingertips when survival prepping is that you can buy courses that you can download to your computer instantly. You don’t have to drive to a bookstore or sign up for a class – you just find the digital information product you want and purchase it so that it’s on your computer whenever you need it.
You can also download digital plans. You can find gardening layouts and seasonal plans or woodworking plans for building things. From a small, outdoor shed to a bed frame, or even an entire cabin – it’s available to you and you may need that in a major SHTF event if you can’t just call a builder or find supplies and have to fashion something together yourself.
Companies Have Begun Catering to Preppers with Readymade Supplies
IN days gone by, you’d have to piece together your survival prepper supplies in a piecemeal style – little by little, gradually finding what you need to make a whole supply or kit.
But now, manufacturers are ready for the influx of mainstream survival preppers and they’re cashing in the demand for these items. Many people don’t want to spend a lot of time buying things one by one (although many preppers prefer this method so that they get exactly what they need).
You can find readymade survival supplies for many different things. For example, you might buy a first aid kit. They have ones that have 57 pieces for $18 and those that have everything from Band-Aids to ensure trauma kits used by EMTs for hundreds of dollars.
Some people first invest in the readymade kits and then begin adding on to those with individual purchases to supplement, expand and personalize their supplies for exactly what they want.
So if you buy an average readymade first aid kit and it contains one aluminized rescue blanket and you need four for your family, you can simply buy three additional ones to top off your supplies.
Other readymade supplies you can find include survival food buckets, MRE (meals ready to eat) boxes, bags of water, containers of individual dehydrated foods like eggs or milk, and more.
You can find readymade bug out bags. They come with the bag itself, food and water, hygiene and sanitation items like toiletries, first aid supplies, lights, weather protection items, and other gear like rope, a knife, can opener, duct tape and more.
There are generic emergency survival kits with all kinds of tactical gear that includes fire starters, camping utensils, military shovels, water purifiers, paracord, fishing kits and many other items.
You can find readymade kits that are based on the number of people or number of days, weeks or months, too. For example, you might find a 2-person, 3-day kid that includes enough food and water to survive that amount of time.
Or, you might find a container of survival food tabs that will last one person 15 days using 180 tabs for a short-term emergency situation. There are survival kits you can store in your car, in bunkers or just in your storage pantry.
There Are Communities Online and Offline of Like-Minded Individuals
Another benefit to embarking on a survival journey now is that you’re not alone in your endeavours! You can find online communities of people in forums, on social media (in groups), and elsewhere to have camaraderie with.
Offline, there are meet ups and communities being formed where people build homes in the same area so that they can be homesteaders as a group, rather than on their own. While you don’t have to go to that length, you can still meet with others and learn from them.
Sometimes, the communities you join online and offline won’t necessarily have anything to do with survival specifically, even though they are good survival skills to learn. Like gardening groups, for example.
Your community may have a local gardening group or club where they get together and learn strategies for growing food in your zone. You don’t have to announce to anyone that you’re doing it for survival purposes – just learn the skills and apply it to your life when prepping.
You can look up your area and the words “foraging group” to see if there are people who meet up to learn how to forage in the wild for food. This is a great way to learn skills and meet people who can guide you in the right way to do things.
You Can Tailor Your Plans to Your Preferences
Another reason why now is the perfect time to start your survival prepping journey is that you have an endless supply of options. Everything can be tailored to exactly what you need, want and prefer.
If you’re planning based on a budget, you can tailor your plans around that. If you have some sort of special needs for your family in terms of health preparations, you can make sure everything is tailored to those.
There are some preparations that have to be done based on where you live, such as gardening zones or what’s allowed by your HOA and you can make sure that whatever plans you’re implementing, it’s all aligned perfectly with what you need.
Your location might also steer your plans to something specific in terms of weather. Do you live in a hurricane zone? Tornado Alley? In an area known for earthquakes or blizzards or floods?
Your preparations might be unique to someone on the other side of the country (or world), so survival plans are never one size fits all. Some of you will be planning for yourself only, while others plan for a family of five.
Global Situations Have Made Prepping a Necessity Instead of a Luxury
What’s good about the way humanity is able to communicate globally now is that everyone knows what’s going on in the world and it drives people to get prepared quicker.
For example, even during the pandemic, as soon as people in middle America saw social media and news stories about store shelves clearing out of toilet paper on the coast, they were able to stock up before it became widely known.
You might start to see signs of global economic struggles or hear about supply chain bottlenecks in other countries and it can give you heads up about what’s short and what you need to prepare as a priority on your list above all else.
Energy shortages or the price of gas rising might be more apparent in Europe before we see signs of it in America, so you might get prepared faster for something like that whenever you hear news of it globally.
This means you have to stay aware and informed. You don’t just want to watch your local 5 o’clock news, but also know what’s happening all across your state, in your region, in the country, and in other parts of the world.
DIY Gadgets Have Given You More Power Over Your Survival
One of the best things that has come about from the evolution of survival prepping is that companies have begun not only selling your readymade items, but also creating tools and gadgets that can help you be more independent.
A good example of this is canning and dehydration kits. You don’t have to try to figure things out on your own anymore. There are kits and kitchen gadgets you can buy that make it all easy for you.
You can buy a 12 or 23 quart pressure canner that makes guesswork a thing of the past. These smart gadgets know exactly how to make sure your food is safe for consumption.
Or, you can put meat, fruit and vegetables in a food dehydrator and store your own food for survival rather than investing in brands that increase the price of readymade foods just because they can.
You can buy outdoor rainwater systems for collecting, storing and using water for irrigation – so that you don’t have to rely on city water in the event of an emergency, and more.
Becoming a survival prepper is no longer something you have to tread lightly about. You also don’t want to announce it to the world, but for different reasons. It’s not anything to be ashamed about now – (it never was) – it’s something that makes you smart, prepared and able to easily provide comfort and protection for your loved ones.
Until Next Time
Dominus Owen Markham
