The World is a Mess: A Quick Primer for Beginner Preppers

This article was originally published by Tess Pennington at ReadyNutrition.com

Tess is the author of The Prepper’s Blueprint: A Step-By-Step Guide To Prepare For Any Disaster

For seven years, my family and I have been preparing ourselves for a long-term economic depression to occur. I have watched events unfold that affected our food supply and our transportation. I have seen diseases and illness that were considered eradicated in this country make a come back and threaten our wellbeing. I held my breath hoping these disasters wouldn’t be the triggering event that would cause our great country to go under, and used those catastrophes to see holes in my preps and filled them the best I could. I knew the only control I had was to prepare for them; so I kept my head down and pressed on. I am writing this today because I feel that we are quickly approaching a time when action must be taken. Sadly, a vast majority of the population refuses to see the economic storm approaching in the distance and will be ill-equipped to survive such an ordeal.

Admit to yourself that in the past five years, our country has drastically changed. Localized events are now increasing with more and more volatility. Former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright said it best, “The world is a mess.” Quite literally, the world as we know is being altered from the once easygoing lifestyles we have grown accustomed to into a unstable mercurial powder keg ready to explode. At the forefront of these issues is the economic disasters playing out in Greece and China causing many to wonder whether or not the dominoes will finally drop. In the U.S., many believe the Federal Reserve hasn’t done enough to prepare the markets for this type of instability. Food prices are inflating because many of the food staples we have grown accustomed to have reached their peak. Increased government taxation will also cause a slow degradation to our once flourishing nation. Additionally, due to the continued dissonance amongst races, we have watched our cities become battle grounds. And, perhaps the most heart-breaking of all is how quickly the once “land of the free” is showing clear signs of becoming a police state.

How can a new prepper prepare?

I realize that the preparations new preppers are looking at are daunting and may seem overwhelming. While many seasoned preppers were able to collect their preps over a longer period of time, new preppers are scrambling to catch up. First things first, breathe and focus on what your goal is. When I wrote The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster, I emphasized the importance of breaking down your preparedness endeavors into short-term and long-term emergency scenarios. Organizing it in this manner, takes some of the stress off and helps you stay more focused with your preparedness goals.

Shift your perspective. To live long term in a economic depression-like event, you need to look at things differently and stop allowing consumer marketing companies to tell you what to buy. Secondly, make the realization that planned obsolescence is wasting your hard earned money. Planned obsolescence is when businesses design a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. An example of this would be the cellular phone fads. The rationale behind the strategy is to generate short-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases until customers catch on and move to another product platform. Many companies are doing this, and recognizing you are being deceived is the first step in stopping it.

Learn to be more sustainable. The next step is to find a more sustainable approach to living your life and investing in products. You need to focus on sustainable ways to make the most of what you have. The adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without,” needs to be your motto from here on out. Here are 50 ways to make the most of items you have around the house.

What’s your plan? Waiting for this ticking time bomb to detonate is a horrible way to spend precious time. You can start making a plan. According to this article, here are nine steps to take to prepare for an economic depression are:

1. Hold no debt (for most people this means renting)


2. Hold cash and cash equivalents (short term treasuries) under your own control.


3. Don’t trust the banking system, deposit insurance or no deposit insurance


4. Sell equities, real estate, most bonds, commodities, collectibles (or short if you can afford to gamble)


5.  Gain some control over the necessities of your own existence if you can afford it


6.  Be prepared to work with others through bartering networks as that will give you far greater scope for resilience and security


7.  If you have done all that and still have spare resources, consider precious metals as an insurance policy


8.  Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you


9.  Look after your health!

Take action. Rather than paying for luxury items like cable television, and those morning coffee runs, use your money for wisely and invest in long term items like shelf stable foods, food preservation tools. As well, if your job dictates that you live in the city, talk to country cousins and make plans to live there if times get unbearable. Sending money to set up long-term food stores, off grid tools, etc., would be very beneficial and you will have peace of mind knowing your family has a place to go if you have to leave the city. Here’s an article on how to get started with the basics of prepping. As well, check out this food calculator to see how much food your family needs. Also, consider these eight prepper items to help you through a disaster. In addition, our health system is becoming unsustainable. Recently, an article exposed the unfeasible $153,000 hospital bill to care for a rattlesnake bite. Who can afford this? Start looking at natural alternatives to care for certain ailments. Medical conditions that can be cured with natural medicine such as herbs and tinctures can save you a fortune.

Our world is changing, and in order to survive, you must adapt to the changes or pay the price. World economic events are beginning to increase the possibility of a world-wide depression. If you haven’t begun to prepare, now is the time to make plans. I urge all of you to begin actively putting survival items away. Mark my words, you cannot hide from what is about to go down. There are two choices: 1. Ignore the signs and hope the event changes course, or, 2. Acknowledge there are economic storms in the future and prepare for them the best you can. The bottom line is, there is no safety net to fall into when an economic emergency occurs. How easily you land depends on how insulated you were from the disaster to begin with.

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Additional Resources:

The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster

The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals

Prepper’s Home Defense: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary

The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way

SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation

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Tess Pennington is the author of The Prepper’s Blueprint, a comprehensive guide that uses real-life scenarios to help you prepare for any disaster. Because a crisis rarely stops with a triggering event the aftermath can spiral, having the capacity to cripple our normal ways of life. The well-rounded, multi-layered approach outlined in the Blueprint helps you make sense of a wide array of preparedness concepts through easily digestible action items and supply lists.

Tess is also the author of the highly rated Prepper’s Cookbook, which helps you to create a plan for stocking, organizing and maintaining a proper emergency food supply and includes over 300 recipes for nutritious, delicious, life-saving meals. 

Visit her web site at ReadyNutrition.com for an extensive compilation of free information on preparedness, homesteading, and healthy living.

Making a Homestead Evacuation Plan

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

With wildfire season approaching in California, my thoughts are with my many friends there who have small farms. Even if you don’t live in a wildfire zone, if you raise livestock, you need to have a homestead evacuation plan. Any place can have a barn fire, a chemical spill, or other environmental emergencies.

I’ve written quite a lot about evacuations since my family and I were right on the verge of it during the King Fire. Fires can approach shockingly fast, and being ready before there is ever a hint of smoke in the air is the best way to get out quickly when the time is short.

But things change dramatically when you add a farm or homestead to the mix. Suddenly, you have more living creatures in your charge than you do space in the vehicle. You absolutely must have a plan in place before a disaster occurs, because if you wait for the evacuation order, you’ve waited too long.

Create a homestead evacuation plan.

Here are some of the things that I learned about homestead evacuation. Use this to create your own plan, because disasters can strike anywhere and we all have different resources, livestock, and circumstances.

Be aware of what’s happening nearby. When I lived in California, I haunted the local boards that discussed fires and other events. I had friends who were former firefighters and subscribed to phone notifications from the local sheriff’s department. If there was a fire or mudslide nearby, I knew about it while it was still miles from me. That way, I could assess my plan and see if action needed to be taken immediately, or if I just needed to stay on top of the situation.

Figure out where you’ll take your livestock. Often, local fairgrounds will open their facilities for farmers to bring evacuated livestock. Sometimes veterinarians and kennels will also accept evacuated animals. If you are in contact with other farmers, they may be able to make room for your animals. I belonged to a local homesteading group at the time, and we all made space for animals, trailers, and RVs if we could to help our friends during fire season.

Evacuate livestock early if you can. The last fire that was nearby was called the Trailhead Fire, and it consumed 5,646 acres over the course of 20 days. Toward the end, when it drew closer to our farm, I evacuated all our chickens to a friend’s farm that was out of the danger zone. That gave me the peace of mind to know that if we had to evacuate for real, I only had to grab cats, dogs, and kid, which would have been far faster than chasing a bunch of panicked hens.

Have a way to transport your animals. You will either need a trailer, pens that can go into the back of a truck, or crates that can hold your livestock. You may need help from friends with trailers if you have a lot of animals. Have these things ready so that you aren’t trying to figure out how to move the animals when a fire is approaching.

Have a plan for last-minute homestead evacuation. This is every farmer’s nightmare because if the fire is approaching fast, you may not be able to load up all your animals in time.

• Have trailers and trucks close to the livestock area for quick evacuation.


• If you think you may need to evacuate, contain your livestock in the smallest area possible for ease of loading. For example, if your chickens normally free-range, keep them contained in a yard around their coop so you have a better chance of catching them. Close off the gates to the larger pastures and keep other livestock in the area closest to the trailers.


• Practice loading up. This way, the animals get used to being loaded and are less likely to panic and fight you. Secondly, you know which animals are going to be the most uncooperative and you also have a feel for how long it takes to load them all.


• Have blinders on hand. This may be nothing more than a piece of cloth or a fabric bag, but if your animals are panicking, it can be easier to lead them out if they can’t see the threat. Most people think only of horses needing blinders but it can be far easier to lead goats and cows this way too.


• Give every person a job. Even younger children may be able to help round up chickens or gather feed. Be sure that everyone knows what to do beforehand so that you can all work together quickly and efficiently.


• Remember that if there is a threat like a nearby fire, animals are much more likely to panic due to fear. This means it will probably take longer to load them up.

Know what to do if you can’t evacuate the livestock. If there is no time to load the livestock, at least turn them loose so they have a chance at escaping the flames. If your family is at risk of dying in the fire, you will have to evacuate and leave the animals behind. It’s a horrible choice but could be necessary. Remember the Napa Valley fires last summer? Some people had only moments to flee fast-moving infernos.

Have you ever been through a homestead evacuation?

Have you had the experience of evacuating a homestead? If so, please share your story and tips in the comments section below.

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca</e

What is Courage?

This article was originally published by Joe Alton, MD at DoomAndBloom.net

Dr. Alton is the co-author of The Survival Medicine Handbook, an essential guide for when medical help is NOT on the way.

In the Parkland high school shooting in South Florida, just a few miles from my home, we saw the extremes of human fortitude in the persons of Coach Aaron Feis and Deputy Scot Peterson. Peterson, a trained security professional, stayed outside while a shooting was in progress in the area he was hired to defend. Feis, a man not charged with the safety of others, protected them with his body at the expense of his own life.

I have thought about the idea of courage often; my writings on disaster preparedness presuppose that a certain amount is necessary to be resilient in the face of adversity. Yet, can a person really know what they will do when faced with a decision that can cost them their life?

Some just naturally run towards the sound of gunfire, while others naturally run in the other direction. The Department of Homeland Security recommends going the other way in their “Run, Hide, Fight” triad for active shooter events. There are those, however, who will run towards danger. Many of these individuals are or were in the military, law enforcement, and fire/emergency services.

Examples might be hitting the beach on D-day, running into the World Trade Center on 9/11, or perhaps the nurse who ran into the building to help victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. In many of these instances, they knew they were in danger, but went above and beyond.

Rebecca Anderson, RN, died attempting to rescue victims of the Oklahoma City bombing

Courage takes other forms as well. If you were, for example, the first African-American student in an all-white school district during the civil rights era or the first woman cadet in a military academy, you’ll never have to prove your bravery and determination to me in any other way.

You might think courage is an inborn virtue, constant over a lifetime. I’m not sure about that. I, personally, was a fearful little boy, then became a (stupidly) fearless teenager. I eventually morphed into an average adult. Now, in my golden years, I may have more of a tendency to head towards the sound of gunfire; after all, what have I got to lose at this point? Sit me in front of a doctor telling me that I have cancer, however, and that might be a very different story.

Then there’s the fortitude it takes to re-invent yourself. I don’t consider myself to be particularly courageous. After I retired from the active practice of medicine, I was tempted to take up golf. It was something I had tried years before but was, frankly, terrible at. Instead, I decided, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to write a blog about preparedness. That led to writing books, podcasts, a YouTube channel, and an entirely different career all about teaching others to survive natural or man-made disasters.

It’s hard to teach courage, but you can foster motivation in people. If people are taught the importance of something, they might be more apt to defend it. Loving something deeply also gives you the motivation to be brave in its defense. I can’t think of something more important than the lives of our young people. Coach Feis realized this, and acted accordingly.

Is courage contagious? Fear certainly is. If 50 people around you drop to the floor at the sound of gunfire, you might do the same. If those same people run towards the sound of gunfire, you might, too, although it puts you at risk. You might consider this foolhardiness rather than courage (Homeland Security does), but, where a gunman is concerned, you’re more likely to stop the killing by doing something other than laying on the floor in plain sight.

Many founding fathers lost their entire fortune and some their lives by their decision to support the patriot cause

Speaking of fear, courage is not the absence of it, but. rather, the overcoming of it. There is physical courage and there is moral courage. Our founding fathers were men of wealth and privilege, and it would have been very easy to support remaining a colony of England. But they realized the importance of freedom, and put their fates and fortunes on the line to bring forth a new nation.

Activism is a form of courage, but courage is not just the act of speaking up; sometimes, shutting up and listening to opposing viewpoints takes fortitude as well. If more people would sit down and listen to each other, we might come more easily to agreement on a lot of today’s controversies. This takes more courage than keeping a closed mind.

If we are to be resilient in the face of adversity, it is courage, above all other virtues, that will make it possible. If we are to survive as a society, it will be because of the fortitude and strength of our citizens to pick up the flag, so to speak, and move forward. That goes for active shooter incidents and it goes for every obstacle you face in life.

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Joe and Amy Alton are the authors of the 3 category #1 Amazon Bestseller “The Survival Medicine Handbook“.  See their articles in Backwoods Home, Survival Quarterly, and other great magazines. For over 900 articles on medical preparedness in wilderness, disaster, or other austere settings, go to their website at www.doomandbloom.net. The opinions voiced by Joe Alton, M.D., and Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. are their own and are not meant to take the place of seeking medical help from a qualified healthcare provider. All email content sent by the Altons are copyright DoomandBloom llc, 2017, all rights reserved.

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