Is anyone here a "Prepper"?

[Phil]

It seems like sort of a no-brainer that a group using sustainable draft power might lean towards a prepper type of mindset. Just curious. 🙂

Although I hate labels, I guess I’m a prepper, I’m not so sure the present system will continue and want to do what I can to keep warm, have food, etc… if times get really hard for any reason.

[LStone]

Absolutley, I think… It isn’t a religion for me and I have a million things on my mind so it is mostly a question of priority in a busy. I subscribe to off grid living and self sustainability concepts. But yeah I am a fighter and plan to help my family survive on any terms.

[near horse]

Okay – I’ll bite. What in the world is a “Prepper”? Like Dr. Prepper:)

[mitchmaine]

thanks geoff, i didn’t have the courage to ask. if we are talking about what it seems, there’s no preppin’. if this cookie crumbles it going all the way, i think, and thats anarchy. most farmers i now are independant and strong willed but not warriors. the big grocery chain here in maine has 2 days of food on the shelf and three more in the warehouse. imagine your whole state running out of food cause the trucks couldn’t move? how friendly would your neighbors be and for how long? i don’t know either and i don’t want to. we gotta try and keep this mess going and make changes slow and easy, i think. but we’ve been preppin along time

[dlskidmore]

@mitchmaine 19929 wrote:

most farmers i now are independant and strong willed but not warriors. … how friendly would your neighbors be and for how long?

I think the ultimate survival plan should involve some friends who like to hunt, shoot, or participate in martial arts. They know where you are, know where to come when things go badly, and will be part of your team. No-one can manage alone in anarchy, there must be coalitions and mutual protection agreements. Even the thugs need the farmers they steal from, and if things progress far enough will organize to claim territory with farmers in it, and defend it against other thugs just like the first “nobles” did. May as well have your own team of friendly thugs that understand they need to pick up a hoe in between incidents that require guns and fists.

I do more to prepare mentally than physically for things going badly, but it is a factor in my deciding to step out of the tech world into the agrarian one.

[dlskidmore]

Also, anyone who grows a significant portion of their own food is a prepper by default because we preserve a year’s worth of food every year. A plentiful supply for the family for a year can easily become short rations for a larger group. Even if the freezer goes out, you can dehydrate/smoke most of that and keep it on longer. If you save your own seed, your garden can go in pretty much the same next year, only a little later without the benefit of lights and heating pads to start seedlings.

I think it pays to think about such things, but I’m not spending extra money on fancy freeze dried or canned emergency rations, or on alternative energy sources that will eventually break down anyway.

[Phil]

A lot of homesteaders and others are prepping sort of without really thinking about it, it’s a way of life. To me the best preparedness is to implement self sustaining habits into one’s life right now, using things from the current system with the knowledge that they might not always be available.

There are lots of scenarios from mild to cataclysmic, I don’t care to spend much time speculating. I try to always work towards being able to live a good life without electricity or fossil fuel, with lots of local collaboration and a positive attitude. The irony is that with increased self reliance I seem to become happier and feel more secure. Ease and self indulgence is like a drug, but it is highly overrated IMO.

But there are still many things to improve. To me, a real achilles heel is that not enough people are saving seeds to make a fairly quick shift to all local food production.

[Carl Russell]

Agreed. This website is a perfect example. We can use this technological connection to build community that otherwise we would never be able, but in the long run it will have to the knowledge that there are others out there that keeps us going, not this technology.

I drive a big truck almost every day, but have been putting into place infrastructure and processes that I will be able to succeed right here without the truck.

Carl

[dlskidmore]

@Phil 19941 wrote:

To me, a real achilles heel is that not enough people are saving seeds to make a fairly quick shift to all local food production.

There are so many reasons to save seed! I’m just now getting into this. If you want to grow with the minimum of pesticides and fungicides, it really behooves you to start your own genetics experiment on your land. By crossbreeding a number of heritage varieties, you can develop a strain that is best suited to your soil conditions, with your local weather and pests. Heritage varieties are nice, and some of us need to work at preserving this diverse starting material, but local varieties are a better bet for the average farmer.

The overproduction of certain sterile strains has made us shy of the word hybrid, but it’s really natures best way of maintaining genetic diversity and allowing us to benefit from the best of every variety.

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