Prepping, or preparing for potential emergencies, is a prudent step towards ensuring the safety and well-being of yourself and your loved ones.
Whether you are facing a natural disaster, a power outage, or any other unexpected event, being prepared can make a significant difference.
How to Start Prepping?
Life has become quite exciting, and it’s a wise idea to get ready for future uncertainty. Here’s how to start prepping.
- Needs – Identify the possible scenarios you might face and your vulnerabilities.
- Plan – Now that you have an assessment, you have to address your weaknesses.
- Develop – Always remember that skills are more important than tools.
- Build – Start building your shelter and stocking up on supplies.
- Defend – You have to defend your shelter and stockpiles.
- Practice – No man is an island! You have to belong yourselves to a fellow prepper.
Before we start, what is prepping?
Prepping is a lifestyle to follow, to ensure survival in the event of an apocalyptic event. It involves getting yourself ready to live without the support of modern society’s infrastructure.
Why do we need to be prepared?
We have become so dependent on having a wide variety of services and goods for the best comfortable life. These third-party services are linked to one another and this system is proven to be so much fragile.
What would you do if you woke up one morning with an uncomfortable room temperature? No electricity from the outlet. No lights, Airconditioned, ventilation, tap water, cellular services, and even transportation? How are you able to get water and food delivered right to your doorstep?
How are you going to survive?
What are the scenarios to be prepared for?
When a disaster strikes, nothing beats the prepared. Here are some of the natural and man-made events you have to prepare for.
Natural Disaster
- Earthquake
- Floods
- Landslides
- Pandemic
- Scarcity
- Storm
- Tornado
- Tsunami
- Vulcanic Eruptions
- Wildfire
Man-made Disasters
- Accidents
- Biological Attack
- Civil Unrest
- Chemical Attack
- Crime
- Financial Crisis
- Fire
- Thermo-Nuclear War
- Terrorism
- War
Take it easy
This article is tailored to equip new preppers with the knowledge and resources they need to be ready for natural disasters, man-made events, and personal challenges.
We have included a variety of helpful resources that will help you become more self-reliant and prepared for the future. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to be better prepared for whatever life throws your way.
If you wish to live a preppers lifestyle, there’s a ton of stuff to do so don’t panic. If you do, you will accomplish nothing.
The adventure begins. Let’s prepare!
In this article, we will discuss easy steps to start prepping, guiding you through the process in a clear and concise manner.
Step 1: Assess Your Needs
Before you begin prepping, it is crucial to assess your specific needs and tailor your preparations accordingly. Consider the potential risks in your area.
- Are you prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, or severe winter storms?
- Do you live in an area with a high crime rate?
- Is your country caught on the brink of war?
Identify the possible scenarios that you might face anytime soon so that you will have an idea of where to focus your prepping journey.
Evaluate the potential duration of these events and the impact they may have on essential services like electricity, water, and food supply.
Understanding your unique circumstances will help you tailor your prepping efforts to address these potential challenges effectively.
Step 2: Create an Emergency Plan
Now that you are aware of the risks, it’s time to create a comprehensive prepping plan. Developing an emergency plan is essential to ensure your and your family’s safety during a crisis.
As a starter, you have to focus only on the basic needs in order to survive such as creating a first aid kit, everyday carry (E.D.C.), and a go-bag/box. These considerations must be based on your needs analysis in step 1.
Here are some points to consider.
- A stockpile of food, water, shelter, medical supplies, communication devices, and self-defense tools.
- Break down your plan into smaller, manageable steps to ensure steady progress.
- Determine how you will stay in touch with each other if traditional means of communication are disrupted.
- Assign roles and responsibilities to each family member to ensure a coordinated response.
Step 3: Learn Survival Skills
Tools may be hard to acquire, more vulnerable to being stolen, and can be broken. That’s why skills are more important than tools.
If you have the necessary skills such as creating fire, you no longer need to worry about where to find a match or a lighter.
The below list is the skills you must learn to prepare yourself for any SHTF scenarios.
- Fishing and hunting
- Foraging
- Cooking
- Creating fire
- Water filtering
- Staying gray to the environment
- Self-defense
- First-aid
- Navigation
- Communication
In addition, these skills can be carried everywhere you go, and most important, it’s the only thing that cannot be stolen from you.
Step 4: Build a Stockpile
This is the most expensive part of your prepping journey as we all want to hoard almost all of the basic goods and tools. Accomplishing this can give us the comfort of survivability inside our shelter while the world is in chaos.
This is a normal goal, especially if you have the means of buying, however, if we grab all of the kinds of stuff and store it inside our bunker, you might be mismanaged it and end up accomplishing nothing.
Now that you already know your vulnerabilities, thanks to step 1, you can now begin building your stockpile.
Start building a basic go-bag/go-box with essential supplies such as non-perishable food items, water, a first aid kit, flashlights, batteries, and a portable radio.
After having several of this stuff, you can start upgrading each unit by adding more tools, equipment, and supplies.
One more thing to remember is that you should not let other people know that you are hoarding supplies and equipment just for your own safety.
Step 5: Secure Your Shelter
Now that you have stored precious stuff inside your shelter, you have to defend it against everyone.
The first rule to defend your stockpile is simply not to tell anyone that it exist.
You have to consider that anyone may attack your place by any means they can in order to survive. These people can be gangs, criminals, desperate survivors, and even your neighbor.
The following are the things to consider to fortify your shelter.
- Camouflage – Don’t show anyone outside that you have the comfort of living while they suffer in chaos. The rule is that your shelter shouldn’t stand out from the neighborhood. If there is a power outage, don’t show them that you have lights.
- Surveillance – Consider installing Censors and CCTV in order to have eyes around your property while just seating inside your room.
- Deterrent – Along with surveillance, you can also trick anybody by hanging signs inside your property. Remember that they must only see these signs if they stepped inside your property, and shouldn’t be so obvious for everyone just passing in your front yard.
- Booby Traps – Give your unwanted guest a home tour that they will never forget by setting up traps in your perimeter. It should be nonlethal in the first step and then go more seriously as they go further inside your property.
- Secure Entry Points – If the looters ignored your warnings and managed to pass your booby traps, your next line of defense is the entry points such as doors and windows. Desperation can also drive motivation for these people so think about any other holes that they can fit in such as pet doors, chimneys, and even ventilation holes.
- Weapon – Now that your guest manage to break inside your home or shelter, your major defense is the lethal and nonlethal weapons with you.
Step 6: Practice Everyday
Prepping isn’t just about stockpiling supplies, fortifying your shelter, and having the greatest skills; it’s also about lifestyle.
Here are the points to consider in order to make prepping an everyday lifestyle.
- Mindset – Think that any worst-case scenario may happen anytime. Anything that can be broken, will be broken, at the worst possible time, especially when you are not ready.
- Drills – Do some random drills in order to test your skills and capability. In this way, you can also find some weaknesses to improve from time to time. Regular drills with other preppers can also be an opportunity to learn more skills that you have yet to discover.
- Prepping Community – In times of crisis, having a network of trustworthy individuals can make a significant difference. No man is an island, so you need to find a peer group with the same mindset and goals. After all, only the preppers can defend and look after each other.
Conclusion
Preparing for emergencies shouldn’t have to be overwhelming. It is a lifestyle that you have to live with every day and enjoy. It should be exciting and adventurous but at the same time, wishing that we will never use these skills and tools.
The best time to start prepping is not by later, tomorrow, next week, months, or year – it’s now or never.
Plan now and survive tomorrow. Start your prepping journey.
This article was published on March 18, 2023. Last update on August 7, 2023.