Welcome to the Beginner’s Guide to Prepping, where taking steps today means securing your family’s future tomorrow. As a dad, you’re driven by the need to protect, provide, and ensure that your loved ones are safe, no matter what. Here, Prepping isn’t about fear or paranoia; it’s about being the hero of your own story, ready to face any challenge. Whether it’s a natural disaster, power outage, or unexpected crisis, this guide will help you create a plan, gather essential supplies, and build the skills you need to shield your family from uncertainty and keep them safe.
What is a prepper?
Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask your opinionated, trust-the-establishment brother-in-law, you may get a very different impression than your cousin who was a Boy Scout growing up. While many people have negative associations with “Doomsday Preppers”, a lot this is just misplaced normalcy bias. People assume that because things have always been the way they were, they will always stay the way are, and anyone who thinks otherwise is weird, or silly, or even dangerous.
Nothing could be further from the truth. A prepper is simply someone who has taken thoughtful, proactive steps, preparing in case of an emergency to provide safety and security for their family, and to provide stability to their community. Sounds like a crazy whack-job, doesn’t it? The vast majority of preppers are normal people with a stable 9-to-5, who want their family to be safe if something unexpected happens.
(By the way, the “way things have always been” is actually a long history of natural disasters and famines punctuated by periods of calm. The first-time-in-history availability of global supply chains and on-demand delivery of goods is based on a massively interconnected system, that is vulnerable to disruption. Remember in the first weeks of Covid when you couldn’t get toilet paper?)
Prepping is also exciting. It is fun to daydream a fantasy adventure of being the star in a post-apocalyptic survival drama, being the hero for your wife, your kids and your dog. It may even be a welcome escape for some of us feeling trapped under the weight of our responsibilities, and the daily grind that it takes to keep up with the modern lifestyle. Even if that is the motivation for many preppers, if the outcome is a well-stocked pantry and basic survival skills, so that your family is not relying on emergency assistance during the next natural disaster, then it’s a net benefit for you and your neighbors.
Now, let’s be honest, there is a spectrum of prepping, and someone who has gone to extreme lengths to prepare for a catastrophic, but seemingly unlikely, event may seem off-balance, (to put it mildly) but everyone has to make up their own mind about the relative return on investment each prep provides. Focus on yourself and your family’s situation, and let the internet haters do their job. My first “outlandish” prep was a case of high-quality-for-the-price Vodka, which I was holding onto for barter in the case of the hyperinflation I was sure was around the corner. LOL. You’ll get there too, someday.
Is it time to start prepping?
Yes.
The best time to start prepping was yesterday. The second best time to start prepping is today. The worst time is tomorrow. Because the nature of unexpected events is that you don’t know when they are going to happen, you only have two choices. Prepare ahead of time, or be unprepared.
What you may actually mean is “are things getting bad enough that I should shake off my normalcy bias and start taking responsibility for the safety of myself and my family?”. The answer is still “Yes”. In the first half of the 2020’s, we were locked down by our governments for a year and a half. We saw riots all over the country. We are flirting with Nuclear War in Ukraine and Israel. We are closer to national breakup and civil war than at any time since the Civil War. If that doesn’t convince you to start preparing, what would the world have to look like?
It’s not just political events that put you at risk. Natural disasters are the gateway drug for most preppers. It is reasonable and natural to set aside a bit of storage space for extra food and water in case of an emergency. Take stock of the risks in your area. Are you on a flood plain, or tsunami zone? A wildfire or tornado area? Ice storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, oh my! This is just basic disaster preparedness, and is a great place to start making sure your family is taken care of.
By itself, this is not an argument for digging a doomsday bunker in your backyard. Since you are just getting started, once you have a basic supply of survival food and water, you may decide that it makes more sense to focus on building resiliency skills first. Practicing Camping and Hunting skills are excellent next steps, as are Gardening and Food Preservation. Save low frequency, high impact events (i.e. “doomsday”) until you have some bandwidth and experience.
What is the first thing a prepper should do?
Write. It. Down. Much of the prepper thought process is devoted to considering “what if” scenarios, and gaming out the possibilities of solution X vs solution Y. As soon as possible, convert thought into action by writing out a plan. Name the emergency you’re preparing for, the expected duration before a return to normal, and consider whether you can hunker down at home, or whether you may have to relocate. Write down what resources you will need to acquire, and what skills you can practice ahead of time.
It doesn’t have to be perfect – the important thing is that you get it out. I don’t care how detailed it is, a plan is not a plan until it’s written down. Writing forces an intellectual rigor that only true geniuses can accomplish in their heads. Unless you’re Elon Musk or Nikola Tesla, write it down. By getting it out of your head, you make it real, and give yourself something you can share with those around you.
Prepping basics list
Once you’ve got a plan in place, you will find many of the items you need to acquire are listed on my article
Top 10 Essential Home Preparedness Items for ANY Disaster
and my guide to building your basic emergency survival backpack
72 Hour Bug Out Bag list: 9 Emergency Essentials
Conclusion:
Prepping is a natural step along the hierarchy of needs. You want to make sure your family is taken care of now, and in the future. Once you have a steady job, and a comfortable home, it makes sense to start expanding your planning horizon, preparing for contingencies along the way. Take it a bite at a time, and you will grow into a deeper sense of confidence, knowing that you’ve done what you can to protect your family.
