I’ve always been interested in preparedness to some extent. I was never really a “doomsday prepper,” but I understood the logic behind it. More recently, seeing some of the natural disasters that have happened across the country has made me take it a lot more seriously.
The flooding in Tennessee was a big one for me. Hearing about people being cut off from outside help, sometimes for weeks at a time, was a real eye opener.
It’s easy to assume that if something bad happens, somebody will come help. And in most cases, somebody probably will. But how long is that going to take? What happens when roads are destroyed, communications are down, or emergency services can’t physically reach you?
Those are the kinds of things that got me thinking more about how prepared my own household actually was.
I think we’ve gotten so used to having everything readily available that we don’t really consider what would happen if it suddenly wasn’t.
Need groceries? Go to the store. Run out of bottled water? Pick some up on the way home. It’s convenient, and I’m just as guilty of relying on that convenience as anybody else.
But none of those things are guaranteed.
There have been plenty of disasters where people were completely cut off from the outside world and had to survive on whatever they had available until help could reach them.
And I’ve wondered how many people survived the initial disaster, only to end up in serious trouble afterward because they didn’t have access to food, clean water, or medical supplies.
We tend to focus on the immediate destruction when something like that happens, but the days and weeks afterward can be dangerous too.
Being Prepared Doesn’t Mean You’re Paranoid
I think one of the biggest problems with preparedness is the image people associate with it.
Everybody seems to picture some guy who looks like Rambo with a beer gut, sitting in a basement surrounded by canned food and ammunition, waiting for society to collapse.
And sure, those people probably exist. But I don’t think that’s an accurate picture of most people who take preparedness seriously.
There’s this stigma that keeping extra supplies means you’re paranoid about something terrible happening.
I don’t really see it that way.
I mean, I guess I’m a little paranoid about the possibility of my family being cut off from food and water during an emergency. But is that really an unreasonable thing to be concerned about?
People get stranded during natural disasters all the time. Homes lose power, water supplies become contaminated, and roads become impassable. None of those things are particularly far-fetched.
To me, keeping extra supplies is no different than wearing a seatbelt.
Nobody accuses you of being paranoid about car accidents because you buckle up before driving somewhere.
And nobody thinks you’re irrational for avoiding gas station sushi because you don’t want to spend the next three days regretting your decisions.
You’re just taking a reasonable precaution against something you’d rather not experience.
That’s pretty much how I look at preparedness.
I’m not stocking up on food because I’m convinced the world is ending. I’m doing it because something could happen, and I’d rather have what my family needs if it does.
We’ve Gotten Used to Depending on Everything Working
Honestly, I don’t think most households could go very long without making another trip to the store.
And I don’t necessarily blame people for that.
The way we live now makes it incredibly easy to buy things as we need them. Why bother keeping extra groceries around, paying attention to expiration dates, and rotating food when you can just stop at the store whenever you’re running low?
I understand that mindset because I’ve had it myself.
The problem is that it leaves you completely dependent on stores being open, having inventory, and being accessible when you need them.
And if something interrupts any of that, you’re stuck trying to figure things out at the same time as everybody else.
I think our society has gotten pretty bad about self-reliance in general. We’ve built our routines around everything being available whenever we want it.
Most of the time, that works. But when it doesn’t, things can get ugly pretty quickly.
You Don’t Need to Buy a Year’s Worth of Food
One thing I really want to emphasize is that getting prepared doesn’t mean you have to go all in immediately.
I think a lot of people get discouraged before they even start because they see other people with entire rooms full of supplies and assume that’s what they need.
It isn’t.
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars or have enough food to survive for six months. You can start with a few extra groceries.
If you’re already buying soup, grab a couple of additional cans. Same with other foods you regularly eat.
And please, don’t fall into the trap of buying pounds and pounds of rice and beans just because they’re cheap.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is going to be sitting there three days into an emergency thinking, “Ah, sure glad I packed all these rice and beans.”
You’re going to be sick of them by the middle of day two lol.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping rice and beans around, but you should have some variety. Especially if you’ve got other people in the house who are going to be eating the same stuff.
There are plenty of inexpensive options that store well.
Canned soup is an obvious one. Tuna and other packaged fish are good options if you like them, and there are a ton of different flavors available now.
Walmart even sells prepackaged shredded BBQ pork near the tuna in some stores. There’s Spam, canned meats, pasta, and all kinds of other stuff.
Take a walk down the canned food aisles and actually look at what’s available. There’s a lot more than just vegetables and soup.
Is all of it going to taste amazing? Absolutely not.
But most of it is relatively inexpensive, stores well, and gives you something different to eat.
I’d much rather have a decent variety of food that my family will actually eat than a massive supply of something nobody likes.
I Don’t Want Maintaining My Supplies to Become Another Job
Shelf life is a pretty big consideration for me.
I absolutely hate having to keep track of expiration dates and constantly rotate things in and out of storage.
That’s actually one of the reasons I wanted inventory tracking and expiration management in PreparedCiv so badly.
I like MREs, canned food, dry goods, and anything else that can sit in storage for a reasonable amount of time without needing much attention.
Same thing with water. I’d rather find a storage option that lasts as long as possible than have to replace everything every few months.
Having enough supplies to take care of your household shouldn’t become a chore.
Because honestly, once maintaining everything starts feeling like work, I think a lot of people lose interest.
I know I do.
That’s not to say you should just throw a bunch of food in a closet and forget about it for ten years. You still need to pay attention to storage conditions and expiration dates.
But there are ways to make that easier on yourself.
Buying foods with longer shelf lives helps. Keeping an inventory helps even more.
Which brings me to something I think is just as important as actually having supplies.
Knowing What You Have and Where It Is
Let’s say you’ve spent the last several months buying extra groceries, water, and other supplies.
You’ve got a pretty decent amount of stuff put away now.
Great.
But where is everything?
Is it all in one place? Is some of it in the garage, some in a closet, and the rest in the pantry?
Do you know what’s expired? What’s about to expire?
More importantly, do you actually know how long your supplies will last?
Having twenty cans of food doesn’t tell you much by itself. How many people are eating from that supply? How many calories are you actually getting? Is it enough for three days? A week?
Those are things you should have some understanding of before you need to start relying on what you’ve stored.
And organization goes beyond food.
Different emergencies can require different supplies. A severe weather kit might have a weather radio, flashlights, batteries, and other equipment you want readily available when a storm is approaching.
Other situations might call for a different set of supplies.
You shouldn’t have to dig through three closets and a pile of storage containers trying to remember where you put something.
That’s part of why I think keeping track of your inventory and organizing supplies into different kits is so useful.
It’s also a big part of why I started developing PreparedCiv in the first place. I wanted a way to keep track of what I had, where it was stored, when it needed to be replaced, and how long it would actually last my household.
Because having a bunch of supplies doesn’t do much good if you can’t find what you need or don’t realize you’re running low on something important.
Just Start With Something
If somebody asked me where to start with preparedness, I’d probably tell them to quit worrying about having everything figured out.
You don’t need to know everything about emergency preparedness before you buy a few extra cans of food.
And you definitely don’t need to spend money you don’t have trying to build some massive stockpile.
Start small. Get some extra groceries you actually like. Put aside some drinking water. Pick up a few basic supplies that would be useful if you couldn’t leave the house for several days.
Keep track of what you’re buying, and slowly add to it when you can.
If you’ve got enough for three days, work toward a week. Once you’ve got that covered, decide whether you want to store more.
There’s always going to be somebody with more supplies, better equipment, or a more elaborate setup than yours.
Who cares?
The point isn’t to have the biggest stockpile. It’s to make sure you and the people depending on you have what they need if something goes wrong.
I don’t expect to wake up tomorrow and find myself completely cut off from the outside world.
But people who have been through that probably weren’t expecting it either.
And I’d much rather have extra food and water sitting around that I never end up needing than find myself in that situation wishing I’d taken it a little more seriously.