logo
mobile-logo
HomePosts Tagged "How to Start Prepping" (Page 2)

In any severe crisis or disaster, there is a risk of a breakdown of society. Even if there isn’t a complete breakdown, there’s the possibility of demonstrations, rioting and mob violence. It doesn’t take much for a crowd to form, protesting something; all it takes is an expectation of bad news. Any crowd can quickly turn into a mob and become violent.

Even without any help, mobs can do crazy things. When the Argentinean economy collapsed in 1999, they overturned public transit buses and set them on fire. When the Grand Jury failed to indict the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, the mob burned down 25 businesses in their community.

Mobs rarely are left alone to take whatever action they see fit. There are always instigators looking for such an opportunity. They are quick to show up at any mob situation and turn it to their purposes. In most cases, it is these professional rabble-rousers who turn mobs violent, as a form of violence against the established order in general.

Mob Psychology

In order to avoid falling victim to a mob, it helps to understand a little bit of what’s going on in that mob’s collective mind. I say collective mind intentionally, because you’re really not dealing with people’s individual thoughts; you’re dealing with a collective reasoning; one that is usually directed by people who have nefarious purposes in mind.

There’s something interesting that happens to people in a mob situation; they lose their individuality. They literally stop thinking for themselves and start accepting the mob’s thinking as their own. If the mob gets angry, they get angry; even if they don’t understand why. If the mob starts running, they start running; even if they don’t know where they are going. If the mob is turning over a bus, they’ll help turn over the bus.

Along with losing their identity, people in a mob lose their inhibitions. Normally calm, meek, law-abiding citizens may commit heinous crimes, simply because the mob is doing so. There’s a sense of anonymity in a mob, so people aren’t worried about being identified. If they can’t be identified, then they won’t be punished for their actions.

Mob violence can quickly escalate.

Since the fear of reprisal is what keeps most of us from committing crimes, removal of that fear gives us the liberty to resort to the basest emotions and instincts. Hence, the mob easily becomes violent, allowing all of their pent-up anger out, regardless of whether what they are angry about has anything to do with what the mob is doing or not.

Avoiding the Mob

The best thing you can do with any mob is to totally avoid it. That means avoiding large gatherings of protesters as well as avoiding places where they might gather. You never know which “peaceful protest” will suddenly turn violent, so you are best off not being involved in any of them.

In times of unrest, a police scanner is an invaluable tool to help you know what’s going on and avoid any potential mob situations. If a crowd or demonstration turns violent, the first place where you can receive any news about it is via a police scanner. The police will be working to track the mob, even as they try to disperse it. Their actions will be announced over the scanner.

What if You’re Caught in the Mob?

Even if you try to do everything you can to avoid a mob, you might find yourself caught in one someday. If you do, your goal has got to be to get out of the mob and get away safely. However, you can’t just walk away. To do so would identify you as not being part of the mob and put you at risk of becoming a target.

So, the first priority to fulfill if you’re caught in a mob is to blend in with the mob. You need to act like them, while not becoming part of them. That can be tricky, as the same inclination which has caused the other people to become part of the mob can hit you as well. You’ll need to keep your head clear, while deliberately acting like you’re part of the mob. Just don’t do anything you’ll regret later.

Work your way to the edge

While you are acting as part of the mob, look for an opportunity to escape it. That means working your way gradually to the edge of the mob. Don’t walk directly to the edge, as that will make you stand out; rather, take a circuitous route, gradually working your way to the edge. A little play acting here would be good as well, as if you recognize someone and are moving to their position, then recognizing someone else.

If the mob is moving, then move with it, as you are working your way to the back edge of the mob. That’s fairly easy to do, as all you have to do is be a bit slower than everyone else. Eventually they’ll all pass you by. If it would be easier to get to the edge by angling to one side, then do that.

Arrange a pick-up

Once you are on the edge of the mob and before you break free of it, call someone to come and get you. Don’t have them come to where you are, as that will put them at risk. Rather, have them drive to a location a couple of blocks to the side of where the mob is moving and wait for you there. Once you break away, you can have them move closer, but by no means do you want them to get within a block of the mob at any time. Covering that first block will be your responsibility alone.

Breaking away from the mob

Breaking away from the mob is the trickiest and riskiest part of the operation. If the mob is moving, then you’ll want to find a location where you can go down an alley, into an open building or otherwise disappear from the back of the mob quickly, so that nobody can see you go. The idea is to be out of sight in a matter of seconds, before you can be noticed.

If the mob is stationary, you’ll essentially need the same thing. However, you’ll be faced with the fact that the mob is not moving away from you. So, your escape route has to be extremely good for hiding you from the mob. The best is escaping through a building, going in the front door and out the back. You might even be able to do this through a building that is being looted.

Once clear of the mob, put distance between yourself and them as quickly as you can. Call your pick up ride and have them move to intercept you a block away from the mob. Don’t put them in danger! You would be better off having to run farther, than to put them too close to the mob. A moving car is a very attractive target to a mob.

If they get too close, the mob may decide to surround them, blocking them in. In such a case, there’s a very good chance that they would be drug out of their car and at a minimum be severally beaten. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if they were beaten to death.

The only possible defense in a car is to continue moving slowly. Trying to move quickly, if you are within range of the mob, only attracts them. Moving slowly may allow you to push your way through them. When I say slowly, I mean at a crawl. It has to be slow enough that you won’t actually hit anyone, although you will be pushing them with your bumper.

0 Comments

In any severe crisis or disaster, there is a risk of a breakdown of society. Even if there isn’t a complete breakdown, there’s the possibility of demonstrations, rioting and mob

If you are new to Prepping, then you have come to the right place. Final Prepper was created specifically to help as many people as possible learn about Prepping. Whether you are looking for the supplies you need to make it through a short-term emergency or to the opposite end of the spectrum which is becoming completely self-reliant; we have the information on Final Prepper that will arm you with the tips and ideas you need to start down the path to becoming a prepper. What is a prepper? It depends on who you ask, but for me a prepper is simply someone who is taking steps to ensure that their families are as best prepared as possible within their own resources to handle whatever life throws at us. It really doesn’t matter to me the “what” that people are prepping for, it is the “why” that drives you and makes your efforts sound. I like to think that everyone from the single mother of 3 to the ex-military, living on 200 fortified acres contributes to our community and can learn from each other in some way.

How to start Prepping

Prepping is a lifestyle, not a destination and I don’t think any of us can realistically say we are prepared for anything. I don’t put too much stock in the title of expert as there are not many of us who have survived much more than what we would call minor inconveniences. Living through a power outage or going hungry for a day doesn’t qualify you as an expert. If you have camped out in the woods or eaten a bug, that doesn’t mean you know all there is to know about surviving anything. Each of us has our own experiences and there are those who have more experience in some aspects of living than others, but we are all human. Our drive and determination account for so much more than a lot of people want to consider. Each of us can survive almost anything with the right mind-set, resources and circumstances.

If you would just like to know where to start, we have a lot of articles that get you headed down the path. For a great head start into the things you can do and actions you can take to become prepared, I might recommend you start with the following articles to someone interested in getting started in prepping.

The articles above will cover a considerable amount of information on basic preparedness, but the basics all deserve their own section as well. There are really 4 main areas that almost anything to do with prepping can fall into. Those are Water, Food, Shelter and Security.

Water

Let’s start with the obvious. The average person under normal conditions needs approximately 1 gallon of water for daily use. While a portion of this is for hygiene and cooking, you don’t want to plan on less than this amount in your Survival preparations. Without water our bodies quickly become dehydrated and that can make a bad day worse very quickly. For some great articles on how you can make sure you have enough water, you can check out the following:

Food

When you start to consider prepping, one of the first things you need to start prepping for is food. Simply put, food is one essential you need if you plan on living and your family must have a supply of food on hand regardless what the day or your situation is. Because of our just in time supply chain model, most grocery stores do not have more than 3 days’ worth of food stocked. In any type of emergency or disaster situation, the store shelves are cleaned quickly. You do not want to be one of those people who realize you have nothing in the house for dinner and a major snow storm, hurricane or other event is imminent. You will go to the grocery store and find bare shelves like they did during hurricane Sandy. This happens in every instance where people could face the possibility of going hungry. The stores are cleaned out and the larger your city, the quicker the shelves are bare.

Not only will there be no food on the shelves, but the shelves could stay that way for a long time. What if the roads are impassable? What if there is some supply disruption. You could be out of food for a long time and this should never happen. You eat every day and so does everyone else. Running out of food should not be an option for your family at least for a reasonable amount of time. For information on how to stock up food, we have the following articles.

Shelter

Shelter is a broad subject and applies to a lot of different aspects of prepping, but it essentially speaks to providing a way of keeping you out the elements. Optionally, shelter can be providing you a place that is secure from people meaning to do you or your family harm, or keeping your body temperature at a level that will keep you alive. Here are a few of our articles dealing with the subject.

Security

There are few things more likely to start a fight than the discussion of firearms and more specifically, what the best options for a defensive weapon are if you are just starting your emergency preparations. There are entire survival forums on this subject alone and if you want opinions, there are lots of places to find them. Similar to the conversation regarding Bugging Out Vs. Hunkering down, there are a lot of options, opinions and reasons why you should or should not do one or the other given by everyone. I for one believe that all things being equal, every responsible adult should have a firearm at their disposal for security. For a wide array of topics on this subject we have listed just a few of our articles below.

The sections above are really just a sampling of the over 400 articles we have on Final Prepper. I hope that the above give you a great start and we will keep it up and provide more as the days march on. I hope you will join us on this journey.

0 Comments

If you are new to Prepping, then you have come to the right place. Final Prepper was created specifically to help as many people as possible learn about Prepping. Whether you

With a budget of almost 14 Billion dollars in 2013, you would expect that FEMA would have the resources at its disposal to really be able to assist the public prior to any disaster. If you haven’t already; I recommend going out to the FEMA website to see what their recommendations are for getting prepared. FEMA, through their Ready.gov website is the government’s office that addresses most of the specific topics of the prepper movement so I was surprised at the information I found on their site.

Regardless, I went out to see what I could learn from FEMA. I say that because I truly believe that our government should have the smartest people in our country in positions like this, right? I mean if you are an agency that deals with disaster you need to have the top disaster experts in the world giving out advice, right?

FEMA breaks the topics on their website down into a few categories to start with:

  • Be Informed – This is where FEMA says you can “Learn what protective measures to take before, during and after an emergency”.
  • Make a Plan – “Prepare Plan and stay Informed for Emergencies”
  • Build A Kit – “Build a kit for disasters to be prepared.”

So at first glance this seems like a good start. I went under “Be Informed” to learn what protective measures I could take and decided to start with pandemic. The first thing to notice is that they mention influenza pandemic and I didn’t see anything about Ebola, but let’s just assume that anything bad enough to spawn a Pandemic would be covered by FEMA. They mention having a two week supply of food and water, plenty of prescription drugs, copies of your health records and to talk with family members about how they should be cared for if they get sick. Lastly they ask you to volunteer and get involved.

During an actual Pandemic (this is the page that FEMA has for Pandemic information) they recommend avoiding close contact with people who are sick (Really??) staying home from work if possible and the usual suspects of covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze and washing your hands.

A pandemic by definition is when a disease is prevalent throughout an entire country, continent or the whole world. I am going to add my own addendum that there must be a relatively high loss of life. With that definition, the only other pandemic any living person has seen (I don’t count AIDs or SARS) was the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 that killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people in two years. In the United States alone over 675,000 people died in two years!! When FEMA is supposed to be informing you about what to do for a Pandemic that is the best they can do?!!!

Lists of phone numbers does not prepare you for a disaster

Maybe I am over reacting and this is sound advice? Perhaps, but look at Ebola where they say you are contagious for up to 21 days. If you are supposed to stay indoors for three weeks, you would be mighty hungry that last week if you only stored two weeks of food wouldn’t you? The World Health Organization states that people with Ebola can still transmit the disease though semen for up to 7 weeks after they have recovered. Is it possible that a two week plan might leave you seriously under prepared for the next pandemic?

Obviously I take issue with the plans FEMA seems to have for sheltering in place should that be necessary during a pandemic so I went over to their Make A Plan page and then down to the Plan to Protect yourself and your family link. The page seems worthless to me and the most prominent item on the page is a link to download their Family Communication Plan which is really just a sheet for you to write down phone numbers, a meeting place and medical insurance information. I don’t see how this is a realistic plan. Phone numbers are helpful I guess and having your dentist’s phone number would be a good thing if you are having a tooth emergency but I expected more again from FEMA.

A family survival plan is more than just simply writing down phone numbers and being truly prepared requires more than two weeks of food; especially during a pandemic. FEMA it seems has always recommended the most basic information and supplies that anyone probably already has on hand. Is this preparing or are they trying to cater to our lazy side? Is this the lazy person’s way to prepare? Just write down some phone numbers that won’t help you at all and keep the regular amount of food you probably already have on hand and no worries! But while you’re at it, FEMA does recommend some social messaging shout outs you can use.

FEMA doesn’t have a plan for you

You can go lots of places on FEMA’s website and there is some good advice, but on balance I get the sense that either FEMA is trying to lower everyone’s expectations for any real disaster to the point of leaving millions under prepared or they are simply out of touch with reality. I know people who have been without power for longer than two weeks in the winter and this wasn’t considered a disaster by any stretch. When we imagine disaster, it will probably take FEMA two weeks just to get out and do anything if you are foolish enough to believe that you only have to hold out until they get there. Once FEMA does arrive, they are no magic savior. Remember Hurricane Sandy when the FEMA office closed? They actually had the mental sharpness to hang up signs informing the public, who presumably was going to the offices for assistance, that they were closed “due to the weather”. You can’t rely on anyone else in a disaster so it’s important that you take the responsibility for your life and the lives of those you care about into your own hands.

FEMA doesn’t want to get out in the storm to help you.

So what are my solutions since I seem to know everything? First thing is that will admit that I don’t know everything but I don’t believe there are any one size fits all plans for preppers. You can’t just say store 2 weeks of food and think that will do for just about any disaster. Everyone has to have their own plan that has been carefully structured based upon the needs, resources and skills of your family/group with a strategic consideration of the potential threats you face. Here’s my take on FEMA’s 3 points.

  • Be Informed – Make sure you know what is going on in your home, city, region, state and country. Staying informed doesn’t have anything to do with sports scores, reality TV or what the latest star is doing that has gotten her in trouble. Being informed is knowing what is going on around you (situational awareness) and what is going on that could affect you. Learn as much as you can right now about different ideas and perspectives. I like to think we cover a lot of bases on Final Prepper, but there are dozens of other sites out there that offer a ton of great information too.
  • Make a Plan – Once you have considered who you are prepping for, it then makes sense to ask what are you prepping for. Once you have the answers to those two questions you can start working on a plan that will work for you personally, that addresses the needs of your family with regard to the threats you have identified. Your plan won’t look like mine, but there might be similarities. What works for you might not work for a single mother in the city.
  • Build A Kit – I don’t think the normal supplies I would consider for someone to be adequately prepared would fit into anything I would call a “kit”. A kit sounds like a box that sits in the closet. If you want to be prepared you will need to begin stocking up on supplies and that means different things to different people. There are lots of bases to cover but the most important begin with food, water, shelter and security.

Food

Water

Shelter

Security

Make your plan to fit your family, to take into consideration where you live and what you are dealing with. You will make better choices than any bureaucracy and your family will be better off with you than at any FEMA shelter regardless of the disaster. FEMA doesn’t have a plan for you. They have a plan to maintain order for the masses and hopefully prevent chaos. You are the only one that is going to keep your family’s needs in the front of your focus. Take steps now to ensure you aren’t living with FEMA’s idea of what is important.

What’s your plan?

0 Comments

With a budget of almost 14 Billion dollars in 2013, you would expect that FEMA would have the resources at its disposal to really be able to assist the public

Where to begin prepping?

I imagine a lot of people are like me when it comes to how you were introduced to the subject of prepping. In 2007, there was no Doomsday Preppers TV show that I could look to for ideas, perspective and some humor. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for really, but it all began for me with a sense of urgency. It wasn’t like I was experiencing cold sweats at night in bed or anything like that, but I felt that as a father and husband I needed to get ready. Ready for what? I didn’t know at the time, but I would eventually figure that out.

When I first started prepping I didn’t know specifically what I was supposed to do or what prepping was to be honest – only that I felt that strong need to do something to protect my family. This was a gnawing thought in the back of my mind; like the kind you might get when you see someone whose face is familiar, but you can’t picture where you know them from. When this happens to me, I can’t really think of anything else until I realize where it is that I know that person. It usually passes, but this lingering thought that I needed to get prepared would not go away.

I started to research home security topics first because I imagined someone harming my family and that was an easy jump to make. I needed to get a gun in case of an intruder. I had small children and a wife, so this was logical I thought, but as I was shopping and researching, I entered other areas that increased the world of things I could see as potential problems.

In my mind there was doubt and uncertainty about the future and the only thing that made sense for me to do was to prepare for the worst. It never really occurred to me that I was blowing anything out of proportion or that I should just sit on my 401K until things got better because I knew that eventually bad times were coming. I had energy and a sense of purpose even if I didn’t have my wife on board at the time. I listened to a lot of voices tell me what I should focus on. I read a ton of articles and watched days of YouTube videos but I still felt more urgency than a direction. My gut told me I should be doing something, but still I had no clue where to start. Where to start prepping?

We have a lot of readers on Final Prepper who have been prepping for years. but for this post I wanted to go back to the beginning and try to share what I have learned, what worked for me and what didn’t and hopefully give you some direction that I didn’t have. I know that our readers will help by adding to the conversation in the comments below.

What Every New Prepper Needs to Know:

You are not crazy!

There are a million things we talk about on the subject of prepping, but it all boils down to this. The goal of Prepping is to keep you alive. You prepare for bad things happening in your life. Your preps are those resources (skills, supplies, gear, relationships) you have that will allow you to ride out the bad things with as little negative consequences as possible. Trying to survive isn’t crazy and making sure you have a plan for bad things isn’t nuts either.

Start with visualizing what you are concerned about

In the beginning I focused on a lot of things that I could worry about from the standpoint of my family. There was the possibility of so many things: economic collapse, tornadoes, riots, nuclear war, government tyranny, global pandemic, global warming, global cooling, peak oil, terrorism, peak water, EMP, Zombies, rabid Bigfoot…. OK, I am kidding about the last two obviously but the point here isn’t to focus on a specific threat to your life although thinking about something you are concerned about can help you plan.

Are you ready to start prepping?

How to Start Prepping

Understand what everyone needs for survival

Every human on earth needs the same basic things to live. You need water, food, shelter and security. Can you live without water? Yes, for a while depending on where you are but not for long. Can you live without shelter? It depends; are you in the desert or the mountains of Colorado? Food is probably the one thing you can live without the longest, but lack of a fairly constant source of nutrition will harm your health and make you less able to deal with other issues as effectively as you need. You could have all of these bases covered, but someone who failed to prepared might see you and want to take them away from you and give them to his family.

Read as much about prepping as you can. Learn and get different perspectives before you make snap decisions.

You need all of these survival items, regardless if zombies from outer space are wreaking havoc on earth or the stock market takes a dive and never returns. If almost any of the “threats” mentioned above happened; you can plan on disruptions in your life. They could be minor or they could last years. You can use these things to judge your preparedness level by how long you could survive if you had to count on yourself to get water. If you had to provide your own food, how much would you have? If you couldn’t call the cops would you have some means of defense?

Identify areas where you need to prepare

I think the best thing to do before you start prepping is to think about what your family needs to survive and choose a time-frame. You can start small, take two weeks to begin and start figuring out how much you would need to last for 14 days.

  • Without access to water
  • Without access to food
  • Without access to power/heat/air-conditioning/a house
  • Without the possibility of calling the police

Food and water should be simple. How much food do you need for your family and anyone else who might stop by if you had to stay indoors for 14 days? This should be food that doesn’t need refrigeration that your family eats already. How much water would you need to do the same thing? A good average is one gallon per day per person.

Two posts that might help with your food preps:

Shelter and Security get into different things depending largely on where you live and your personal beliefs in the case of firearms. They also might require licensing and in some cases a higher entry point – cost wise to prepping than food and water.

Start acquiring supplies, gear and skills

You should have at least a short list now of things you need to consider for basic survival for two weeks. How much of this do you already have? Do you have water stored? Do you need containers to store water?

Take care of food and water first because that is the simplest thing to do. Once you have food and water stored for two weeks, identify other aspects you could need like security, first-aid, alternative power, fuel.

Reevaluate and adjust as necessary

If you followed the plan above you have the basics you need to last for one week. Congratulations! This puts you ahead of 98% of the rest of your neighbors. You should have a sense of accomplishment but you may feel like you have only scratched the surface. My personal goal is to prepared to live for one year without access to food, water, the police, power or fuel. I still have a way to go in some areas, but each day is a journey for me. Some days I make great strides. Other days, I have to step back and regroup, but I am always looking down the road.

Looking back over the 8 years I have been prepping, I learned that you don’t want to jump into most prepper purchase too soon. Food and water are easy and I didn’t start buying freeze-dried food until I had 6-months of food stored in my pantry first. I didn’t go out and buy the first gun I saw, I gave some serious thought to what could afford and what would be the best gun for home defense if I could only chose one. I had a long-term plan on firearms, but I didn’t buy them all at the same time.

Ammo was another area that I constantly worked on because at some points in the last few years, you simply couldn’t buy any ammo. I had enough to start with to last me for two weeks of anarchy and built from there alongside my food, water, power and other preps. I tried to not let any single prep get too much attention and slowly grew my supplies evenly, when I could get a deal and not at the expense of something I needed more. One key to remember here is that you don’t have to have everything right now.

Relax but don’t quit

In the beginning, I was consumed with the thought of prepping and how I was so far behind the curve. Since that time 8 years ago, I have witnessed thousands of times where disaster was right around the corner only to wake up the next day to find the world still spinning. This will happen to you, but you shouldn’t give up on your prepping efforts. That is another reason not to pin your actions on a specific event or threat. The people who prepared only because of the Mayan calendar 2012 issue were likely disappointed when nothing happened but this shouldn’t happen to you.

Prepping is a lifestyle that will see you through events we might not even see coming. By preparing now and continuing slowly as your resources allow you will give yourself security. You will give your family protection and a chance at survival. You will be someone who can lead in a disaster and give hope when there might not be any left.

For more information you can start with our Prepping 101 series – How to get started prepping.

I know some of this was remedial to my experienced readers, but hope this was able to help give some perspective to those who may just be getting started prepping. Now, you can go and get someone else to join you too. Together we will make it through whatever the future has planned for us.

0 Comments

Where to begin prepping? I imagine a lot of people are like me when it comes to how you were introduced to the subject of prepping. In 2007, there was no