After reading Lloyd Tackett’s A Distant Eden about how to deal with a solar storm, I decided that I needed to learn more about survivalism, particularly the practical things that one should do to prepare for disasters of all types. I picked up a copy of a new book by a woman named Bernie Carr called The Prepper’s Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster. It’s a good guide for those of you who just want the basics of DIY projects that you can do to get your home prepared for a variety of problems from earthquakes to hurricanes. She also gives a step-by-step guide to such 101 things to do such as disinfecting water with sunlight, learning to build a solar still, learning to distill water, and learning to purify water. Separate sections give information for different disasters such as how to prepare for a tornado, hurricane or even an ice storm.
I’ve noticed that there are a number of other books on survivalism written by women such as Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios. Some of these women seem to be coming around due to the economic decline. For example, according to the author’s biography on the Amazon page for “Survival Mom,” the recession made her think more about survivalism:
I was always the mom with a case of water bottles and blankets in the trunk of her car and famous for saying, “Just in case…” Four years ago when I began to see signs of a deteriorating economy, I wondered, “Is there a way I can be proactive and get my family ready for an uncertain future?”
Well, I guess whatever makes you think about to deal with a disaster before it strikes is good. Now excuse me while I go try and learn how to make a safe from a hollowed-out book: Tip #60 in The Prepper’s Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster.
Also Read:
Bunkers, Food, Armor: Disaster Prep Hits Mainstream
People should always plan for personal disasters, and not just “Oh, I’ll just go live with Mom if something happens.”
Plans for a statewide or nationwide disaster will include the preps individuals need for lesser problems. What people have to watch for are the relatives (or spouses) who think “Oh, Sis has extra batteries in her disaster kit. We can just grab some of those instead of going to the store and buying some.” In-laws can be a problem, too, especially if the spouse refuses to side with you in cracking down.
Short answer: yes. My wife is on this kick now and is mildy obsessed. I think it’s akin to the nesting instinct in women. While I like the dried foods and preserves she is making, the new garden, rain barrel, and asorted EMP resitant items aren’t exactly cheap. At least we aren’t prepping for the zombie apocalypse (yet)
Yes, I am.
This is an echo of a similar phenomenon in the late 70s, the Carter years if anyone has forgotten. After Reagan came, it all seemed silly since the economy was booming and we were going to win the cold war. The fact that it is back now is significant.
The world is way more different now. Just for instance, technology, and islam threats. Facebook, instant-messaging via twitter = simultaneous attacks all over the globe, furthered culture decay in pube schools due to leftist indoctrination, over half of population entitled…. I know, I know hate to be a downer, but….
The media coverage, attempting to mock preppers as nuts, is interesting.
When I meet someone like this in person, I say:
Do you have a fire extinguisher in your house?
Do you have a flashlight in your car?
THEN YOU ARE ALREADY A PREPPER.
We just follow through on the other stuff.
They always smirk, but 25% DON’T have an extinguisher or flashlight!
I have a fire extinguisher in my car, what does that make me?
Be sure to shape the hollow in a couple of those books to hold your favorite handguns! And remember, all those supplies are just like a gun — better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them. A cliche’ but true nonetheless.
I would never discourage anyone from being prepared for any exigency, but the problems we face are systemic, not topical. We don’t need more republicans or libertarians, we need more egoists. Egoists are indomitable — and they know it.
Is the Economy Causing Women to Think More about Survivalism?
No question, but not out of despair: it is foresight. No one under the age of 75-80 has a personal recollection of a time when the US economy was as troubled and uncertain. Survivalists have gone from being on the fringe to the forefront. They know we’re only a natural disaster or an epidemic away from chaos. They know that when it does finally break, no one is coming to save them.
“Heh. I like that. A “Bad Things Happen To Good People Bag”. Remember: You’re a whole lot more likely to wind up using the contents of your “Bug Out Bag” in a Holiday Inn after your home’s been hit by a tornado or burned to the waterline than you are in a FEMA death camp.”
http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2012/04/tab-clearing_23.html
In a way, humans have ALWAYS been preppers. FOr most of human history we’ve lived without refridgeration, or medicine or ERs. While there were communities people still had to plan ahead. You couldn’t order pizza if you forget to get food at the store. You didn’t have machines that could help harvest or trucks that could transport massive amounts of food.
The period we live in something of an oddity. I think the reason people are more obese is because we’re hard wired to NOT turn done food. We’re talking tens of thousands of years were people had to WORK for food, not work to pay for groceries, cell phones, cable bills, etc.
Alot of people sense the US is in decline. The socialists have always wanted to destroy wealth to make us all equal. I remember times in movies and tv shows were the liberal character who was the mouthpiece for the crazy liberal writer would have a speech denouncing American Interests, and now we have a President who was friends with anti American terrorists, and most of American doesn’t even blink at that.
We live under the very real threat of left wingers working hard to destroy the middle class, and destroy American wealth in general. The smarter people are planning to survive it. The slower people, the easily coddled, assume ther was always an abundence of food, and that electriticy was always coming out of wall sockets, the idea that all that takes work escapes them. They believe in any disaster Pelosi and the other Democrats will rush over with nicely wrapped packages of food.
Every disaster film has the same scene in it: the film’s protagonists get trapped in the flood of vehicular traffic fleeing an urban catastrophe.
Do Not be like the extras in those films!
What this says about urban dwellers’ vulnerability to their paid urban ‘planners” plans is legion. If you must navigate an MIT graduate’s grad-project in order to save your family, you’re already dead.
uh, yeah. they’re called mormons. they have perfectly sensible, useful guides for stockpiling a year to five years worth of survival goods. they’ve been doing it near forever.
I think anyone who worries about their husband’s job or heart, and then goes to a playgroup, or the park, or the local swimming-hole, and meets the calm, confident,at peace mother with lovely, well-behaved, talented children, and she talks about having a year’s supply of groceries on hand…..finds it very attractive.
Two things, the economic/political situation and the increased awareness of it on Internet news and comment sources….Wait, three things, women still do most of the grocery shopping and clothes buying (My sister-in-law:”I took him out to get him a new denim jacket and the price was 50% higher”), I imagine they are very aware of what the actual inflation is as compared to what the government/media is stating…
Nobody expects the Female Inquisition.
Why has “survival” become a topic on many more minds these days, and books on formerly derided survivalism it its many aspects become much more prevalent and popular?
I suggest to you, gentle reader, that it is because more and more of us are discerning “the handwriting on the wall,” are sensing something looming ever closer out of the fog that we do not like, and need to prepare against.
Perhaps it is economic/social collapse, perhaps it is rampant crime, perhaps technology run wild, a world-wide pandemic, a nascent dictatorship, or perhaps it is a race war—see Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the MSM, and Obama et al—but, whatever the shape of it might be, more and more of us are feeling in our guts that “something wicked this way comes.”
My suggestion, don’t just sit there with your mouth hanging open, prepare! ‘Cause daddy ain’t gonna bail you out, and perhaps it is even Big Daddy/Big Brother that we will find is looming out of the mist.
Stock up, arm up, learn the skills and mindset you need to survive, keep a low profile, learn and practice “operational security,” and get prepared. If nothing happens you have helped the economy a little and learned a few new things, if TSHTF and you are in the right place at the right time, and are lucky besides, you might have a chance of surviving. Time to face it, you are on your own, and it you don’t help yourself, no one will.
As for real world, on the ground evidence that a lot of people smell something in the wind, I recommend perusal of the last few year’s sales figures for guns and ammo.
One of the few things that humans and animals still have in common is knowing when a bad storm is approching. We both feel the rapid drop in pressure and it makes us feel uneasy. Anyone who has been through a hurricane knows that sorta queasy feeling you get when the storm is about 12-24 hours away-that is instinct talking to you and telling you to run and hide, not just the incessant media yammering about the storm. Some are more sensitive to this effect then others.
This is what many are experiencing with the situation that exists in this country today. Some with the ability to have ‘bugged out’ to other countries, those who do not have that ability get out of the way are trying their best to prepare for the oncoming storm.
I have had that ‘queasy feeling’ about the situation in this country since February/March/April, 2008 when four events happened that told me the election was being essentially rigged. Many of my friends had that same feeling and we all started to prepare for it the best way we could. Some of them who owned small businesses closed them down in the months between the election and inauguration and sold off the assets because they wanted to get something for them before they were not worth anything. A couple sold everything off including their houses emigrated, the others sold their houses and moved out of the big bleu cities they lived in and relocated outside of small towns in red states where they have small farms.
The rest of us have been doing what we can to prepare-paying down debt, moving to a ‘cash only economy’, buying silver/gold when we can afford to, getting fuel efficent vehicles, making our homes as secure as we can, growing gardens, learning how to sew, taking wilderness first aid courses, searching out and downloading information on a variety of subjects, etc.. Over the past three years we have also changed out shopping habits-for example we have been building up a stockpile of items that we knew would eventually be in short supply or become too expensive for us to afford. Have any of you noticed just how poorly stocked the grocery stores are lately? For example where there used to be 30-40 cans of peas (or whatever) on the shelves there are now 12 and that some items you go to buy seem to be out of stock most of the time. Have you seen the prices on staples such as Peanut Butter and other items? They have all shot up in price. We knew that was coming and if you think it is ‘bad’ now just wait.
Of course I know that the vast majority in this country are oblivious to what is happening-distracted by those ‘bright shiny objects’ the MSM constantly holds up to keep them distracted. Some laugh at us and say we are ‘overreacting’. They remind me of the people who chose to stay in New Orleans when Katrina was coming and had ‘Hurricane parties’. When it became obvious to them that they made a really stupid decision to do so (usually when the house started falling apart and they are in waist deep water) they will scream for help and there is no one that will come to their rescue. Liberals, academia and the rest of their ilk are fond of Darwin but they always seem to forget that one of the main tenets of his theory is the survival of the fittest. In the situation we find ourselves in now they are the most unfit for they willingly ignore that ‘queasy feeling’ that bot animals and humans feel right before a big storm.
We had an unexpected snowstorm in the East last fall, when most trees still had leaves on them. Lots of branches came down on lots of electrical wires, and we had no electricity for 4 days. How to heat an inner city home with no fireplace, and how to cook meals? It’s a good thing we’re campers. We had what we needed. But it was eye-opening, to say the least, when we went to the local Wal-Mart to pick up a few extra 1 lb propane canisters. Not one on the shelves. No flashlights, no batteries…this was Wal-Mart, and it was picked clean. The husband thought to look in the plumbing aisle and found they still had the propane plumbers use for their soldering torches. The power came back on sooner than expected so we ended up not needing them.
After that experience, which wasn’t really major by any stretch of the imagination, we realized how important it is to keep extra supplies on hand. It’s common sense, really. You never know what’s going to happen. Best to be ready for it when it comes.
hopefully the close-tag works.
Look, just see the utterly incompetent reaction of FEMA against any natural disaster, and you know we’re gonna be up the creek if anything REALLY serious hits the fan.
And the anti-humanist idiots at the EPA reducing the ‘headroom’ of the electrical grid etc. with inane regulations does not help either.
Thanks for the link to Survival Mom’s book…I ended up checking out her website and found answers to a lot of the how-the-heck-do-I-start questions I’d had. Great, simple, smart ideas for dealing with natural or man-made situations.
Be sure to download survival books and important info to your Kindle, Nook or I-Pad for easily transportable reference material. I have already created an electronic library of useful info including knots and hitches for example.
So, which book should the kids get me for Mothers’ Day?
Jeannette:
If it’s only one book, I suggest Patriots by James Wesley Rawles (currency collapse).
Then, Lights Out, by William Forstchen (EMP)
Then, The Rift, by Walter Williams (New Madrid quake).
There is a host of other good books on the subject. I’d also suggest reading http://www.survivalblog.com, and The Day The Dollar Died blovel archived online at http://www.johngaltfla.com
There was once a day when self-reliance was an important part of society. We raised our own food, raised our own chickens and pigs, had cows and goats for milk.
Today, society looks at that lifestyle as living on the fringes of society.
Survivalism is self-reliance. Its the way our grandparents and great grandparents lived.
Not everyone welcomes this age of technology. Some of us want to pick the tomatoes from our garden and have get eggs from chickens we raise.
Long ago, on, IIRC, the news group misc.rural, I commented that most rural people of that era were survivalists but just did not realize it because of the slanted image shown by the then news media.
Wow. Was there ever an uproar. So many did not catch that I was saying they had been lied to about what survivalism was.
I stand by what I said then. “Survivalism” is simply preperation for a time of frugal living, in case it comes time to live in a frugal fashion.
The US is no longer creating more wealth than it is consuming. We are going to be in the deep and stinky if things don’t get turned around.
Learn a useful skill and build relationships with others who have useful skills. It is better to make friends with a veterinarian than a gender studies professor.