Ideas of freedom and liberty also lead to thoughts of self reliance, prepping and personal responsibility. The government often believe they are so virtuous and help everybody, but often times they make poor decisions that make things worse, lower our purchasing power, put us into wars and in some cases we even see genocide and terrible atrocities. When seeing these massive issues and how government makes the same mistakes over and over it isn’t out of the realm of reality to believe that we might have a financial collapse or distribution issues (as we are seeing right now). For these reasons and those of natural rights we believe less government is a better thing. When we have less government as we would advocate for this also means there would not be all of the government programs to take care of us from cradle to grave like we are little children or sheep that must be tended to. With this being said this means for those who believe in liberty and freedom (and really all people) should be somewhat prepared.
What is Prepping?
The dictionary (from google) gives this definition of Prepping.
Prepping: the practice of making active preparations for a possible catastrophic disaster or emergency, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.
At one point I had a survival blog called Beat The End that our motto was Beans, Bullets and Bandaids.
What this means is that we should have proper preparations to be able to survive for certain periods of time without much help from others, though I do believe there would be bartering and others who would give charitably. Another good principle coming straight from Jesus Christ would be to be able to help the poor or those who are having trouble in these situations also. Having enough for your family plus more for others can be a great goal to reach. If you are a beginning in prepping this may be helpful as an outline about how to get started. This is by no means meant to be an all encompassing list of what you should or will want to do just some good things to do.
Prepping Tools
The beans part of the motto means to get some stockpile of food and water. Where do you start with getting the food. Well there are many things in grocery stores like canned foods and dry goods that can last a while though they definitely have expiration dates that may only be a couple years out. These may be good things for short term imminent disruptions. Prepping for longer periods of time like 10-15 years takes a different strategy. You can still buy rice, beans and dry goods like this but vacuum packing and putting them into 5 gallon buckets can help them last longer. This can be a process and may take some other things like a vacuum sealer, bags and buckets, the great thing is that there are many different companies that have these already prepackaged in buckets or number 10 containers and you can just buy them and store them in a closet.
With all these dry goods and just with living in general you will need water. If you have some kind of well that may be what you need though you may have to have backup electricity or a manual way to pump the water. For most of us that don’t have this, having 55 gallon food grade (very important to be food grade) water barrels or 275 or 330 gallon food grade IBC totes are probably the most cost effective ways to do this though you have to have a bit of storage. The last option is 1-5 gallon containers of water which can work as well. Anything is better than nothing. Remember that water can get bad over time and there are additives (often bleach in very small quantities) to help the water last longer. There are many tutorials online on how to do this. The last thing to remember if problems are imminent and you think water may no longer flow is that many homes have ways to hold water. Your hot water heater if it has a tank is probably 40-50 gallons, in the tanks of toilets (as bad as it sounds this water should be fine) there are a few gallons, bathtubs can hold a lot of water and you can fill it and then you may have many other random buckets and things to fill with water. The last thing to have would be a water filter. Maybe a Berkey or a smaller one like an MSR Miniworks like I have.
Next would be bullets. Many times during crises there will be people just trying to survive and that could mean self defense is imminent. So having ways to protect yourself and your family may be necessary. Having guns, weapons, bullets, body armor and other things may become very valuable to you. Though knowing how to properly use what you have is probably the most important part. Martial arts lessons may be another part of this.
Thinking of bandaids we want to think of the things that can help save us when we do get hurt. In these times we probably will be doing more hard labor and probably be dirtier and there is likely to be less doctors and if there is they are probably busier than ever. Having the skills to use these things is very important also. We took an IFAK Life Saver course with Independence Training that was very helpful in learning some first aid skills and what first aid Items you should have. The things you will want are much more than just some bandaids and Neosporin. Those are for little things not for life threatening injuries. You can get IFAKs (Individual First Aid Kits) online already put together but make sure they have important tools like tourniquets, occlusive chest seals, hemostatic blood clotting agents Israeli bandages and some of these things you don’t see in a standard first aid kit. Another important thing to have are antibiotics and a stock pile of any medications you need, though this can be hard to get.
Those are the three main things within the prepper motto, but here are some other things I would definitely add to it.
Energy is a very important thing to remember as it is needed to cook food, heat yourself and possibly run electronic devices. Having a wood stove with wood stockpiled may be one of the most valuable tools as you can not only cook, but heat your home. Having some sort of wind generator or solar generator can be handy as well.
Other types of investments from gold and silver to cryptocurrencies may be important depending on the crises. These things may be a hedge against a falling dollar and may be what is used for trading. There are many places to get these like Coinbase (though you may want something like a private wallet) and Investor Crate for precious metals.
Skills and Mental Fortitude
Those are the three main things within the prepper motto, but here are some other things I would definitely add to it.
The first important thing is skills. I talked a little bit about that in prior paragraphs, but having the skills to use the equipment you have or being able to craft something you may need is very important. Having the stuff to prep without understanding how to use them or how to improvise really does you little good. Some of the skills you might think about learning are gardening, building skills, mechanical skills like working on vehicles, first aid skills, self defense skills, hunting and fishing skills, cooking skills and there are many others that may come in handy. Most of these things can be done in your free time and there are many great youtube videos on how to do these things. Why not learn a new skill.
Maybe the most important thing is the willpower and the perseverance to get through a tough time where you are not really thriving, but only surviving. This could really test you and can break you if you don’t have a mindset to counter that. I find that Jesus Christ and my faith is a good way to be able to get through hard times and to be able to press on. That may be something else for you, but you will have to find what gives you strength to persevere.
Yep I know there is way more to this than what is discussed, but there are full sites to help you on your prepping journey. Prepper Website is a great resource to get tons of articles from many different prepper and survival sites on all kinds of different subjects that pertain to survival and prepping.
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