Do You Consider Yourself a Prepper? Extreme or Just Slightly?

[Baymule]

Like many of you here and on BYC's sister sites, I have a garden. Not a big one, but enough to get a lot of our food from. I dehydrate, can or freeze the extra. Most gardeners do. Does this make me a prepper? Or just someone smart enough to preserve the extra that I have been blessed with? Friends this year gave me figs and pears. I made strawberry fig preserves and lemon fig preserves. I peeled, quartered and cored the pears, and canned them in light syrup. Delicious. Does this make me a prepper or just smart enough to recognize that fruit tastes good in the winter time too?

We live in hurricane country. We have gone weeks with out power. We have a small generator that kept the freezer alive and ran a fan and a light or two. At the start of hurricane season, I run down my checklist of things to have on hand. I am prepared. I have extra canned goods in the pantry. Stores get wiped out and the shelves are barren even weeks after a hurricane. I can feed my family and friends too.

I do not consider myself to be extreme in any way. I hear all the gloom and doom phrophets shouting from the rooftops and some of them make a lot of sense. Some of them just have a bunch of stuff to sell and fear mongering seems to work fine for them. Even if I breathed their dire warnings as gospel, I could not afford to buy all the products that will save us from riots/starvation/thieves/no electricity/break down of society/and all general bad guys. I 100% believe in our rights to own firearms and defend ourselves, but I do not dress in bandoliers stuffed with bullets, bristling with firearms and hunting knives. I look pretty normal.


So where do you draw the line? How much preparing for the worst do you do? Do you prepare for anything at all? Do you have more than a week's worth of groceries in the house? do you keep cash on hand? You might not need to answer that question, but consider it carefully. What happens if the government declare a "bank holiday" and all your money is "safe" in your bank account?

Are you a prepper or do you think it is all a bunch of BS? Does the state of this country worry you?

Let's keep it as civil as possible on this discussion so the Mods don't lock it down. Present your thoughts, your views and your beliefs and why you feel that way in a civil dignified manner. Let's have a good, clean discussion. No bashing of either political party, although I could be a ring leader on that one, I shall refrain, so you do too.

**Edited by Staff**

 

[AK Baha]

I am not so much a prepper as a survivalist. I hunt,fish,gather and grow most of our food.I spend a lot of time at our cabin that is totally off the grid.

 

[Clay Mudd]

Does this make me a prepper? Or just someone smart enough to preserve the extra that I have been blessed with? Friends this year gave me figs and pears. I made strawberry fig preserves and lemon fig preserves. I peeled, quartered and cored the pears, and canned them in light syrup. Delicious. Does this make me a prepper or just smart enough to recognize that fruit tastes good in the winter time too?
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In both cases, I would say "smart enough...", but then, I've come to hate the word "prepper". I don't know how it is that what used to be considered common sense is now seen as something unusual -- both by the media, who try to make it look like insanity, and by the prepper community, many of whom think they invented the idea of buying a gun and buying a few extra groceries.

Personally, I am, or was, an engineer. All good engineers are pessimists to a degree. We look for things that might fail, and plan for it.

Quote:
Well, let's see. Preparing for the worst was part of what got me active (again) in gardening, and gardening indirectly got me started raising chickens. Even if things don't get completely horrible, food is going to keep on becoming more expensive and less.. well, good. So I'm working hard to take as much control of my food supply as possible.

We stock a lot of food; the pantry closet always has a month or so worth of dry goods, and we have another few month's worth in long - term storage. I've always got about 2 week's worth of drinking water stored away, and have several rain barrels and a water filter just in case.

We keep a big envelope of cash on hand, primarily in case of evacuation. Like you, I live in hurricane country. We have a bag with all the vital papers and a list of motels in a suitably distant area for that, as well.

Guns? Yeah, I've got a few. Probably no more than most of my neighbors, though.

We're in decent shape for a power outage, no matter how long it is. About 3 different ways to cook without gas or electricity. Most of them, we use pretty frequently anyway. In fact, I have very little "survival gear", in the sense of stuff that's only to be used in emergencies. For that matter, if the power goes out forever, most of my woodworking tools are of the non-electric sort, so even that's covered.

I don't see any of this as "extreme", merely prudent. Maybe it's because I'm an engineer -- I'm always looking for what can go wrong, and how to fix it.

 

[StupidBird]

I thought the definition of an engineer was "looking for failures and planning for them"!

From a family of engineers..

I look at people who don't do some basics for obvious foreseeable problems as totally lacking common sense. That is the kindest description I have. There are so many I see stumbling cluelessly through the world expecting others to pick up after them. Oops...oncoming rant,I will go look at funny kitty pictures now!

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

Quote: In some places, that IS "normal"

 

[Baymule]

In some places, that IS "normal"

Haha, I have to admit that I have been this kind of normal before.

 

[MamaDoodle]

I don't really plan on a specific kind of event to prep for, but just in case, I think I am prepared enough to stay in my home for an entire season, let's say Winter.

To me, this is normal, but we have a couple of guns, a crossbow, a garden large enough to can and freeze from, and live where we can walk outside and shoot a deer if need be. I have my chickens for food, and horses for local transport rather than the cars. We have a fireplace if the power were out, and use a well rather than city water...if that failed, we have creeks, ponds, and rivers right here...the mountain lake isn't far, either.

While I don't think we'll ever be facing a zombie apocalypse or something similar, I think we could make it through something like a natural disaster or some extreme in-country "issue." But mostly, I'm just keeping ready for seasonal events or lack there of, at the moment, Winter, and avoiding the store or other commonly needed services.

 

[StupidBird]

Just a little bit more than just slightly. Practical stuff IMHO including food for more than a few days. That's come in handy withme laid up right now. Big garden mostly due to food allergies and sensitivities causing a big food bill if I didn't just do it myself. A bit set by for power outages from storms. Every so often, a decade or so, there are big ice storms that pull down trees and power lines.

I don't see it so much as the prepper label at this level, as much as plain common sense. Every area has its known complications.

 

[DuckLady]

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[Baymule]

Just a little bit more than just slightly. Practical stuff IMHO including food for more than a few days. That's come in handy withme laid up right now. Big garden mostly due to food allergies and sensitivities causing a big food bill if I didn't just do it myself. A bit set by for power outages from storms. Every so often, a decade or so, there are big ice storms that pull down trees and power lines.

I don't see it so much as the prepper label at this level, as much as plain common sense. Every area has its known complications.

This is exactly what I mean. Not obsessive, but just plain common sense. Having extras beyond what you need right now is the smart thing to do. It doesn't always have to do with the economy or the weather, but can provide a cushion to fall back on in times of need. A lot of things can happen to where you find yourself in a bind. Loss of a job, hours cut back, sickness or injury ( I sound like the AFLAC duck don't I

) a hurricane or snowstorm, having a packed pantry, extra bags of chicken feed, dog food or some money tucked away in a hiding spot, can make the difference in hard times and flat out desperation.