The Prepper Journal

Pop Quiz: Are You Ready for the End of Prepping?

Since its inception back in January of 2013, The Prepper Journal has been a blog that I started with the hope of being able to share information with people from all walks if life in order to urge them to prepare for unforeseen disasters. I like to think we have been true to that goal and that hopefully we were able to add something to the conversation that continues to this day. In the articles I have personally written, I have stated numerous times that I believe Prepping is a lifestyle. Prepping is something you have to do every day and there really is no end. I still believe that is valid in one sense, but today as I was walking my dog, I started to realize that there really is an end. Prepping for a natural disaster for example is over the second the disaster strikes. If the event you are prepping for happened today it would be the end of prepping as you know it and you would need to start surviving.

There were a couple of reasons I came to this personal revelation and primarily it stemmed from reading other survival blogs as I do almost every morning. I read an article on the Master Woodman site that I reached from Survival Blog about Cody Lundin and his reflections on “Survival Entertainment”. For those who don’t know, Cody has written at least two books, one of which I personally own and recommend (When All Hell Breaks Loose ) additionally,  he appeared on the TV show Dual Survival for several seasons. The article wasn’t what inspired my doom and gloom mood today, but it was thinking about Cody and how he has taught Primitive Survival for so many years. I have for a long time tried to argue with myself about the balance of primitive survival skills I should reasonably have versus urban survival skills. In my mind, knowing how to make fire from a fire plough for instance was neat, but when would I really ever get to put that into practice? Sure, I could somehow find myself lost in the wilderness with no way to start a fire, but a little planning should prevent that, right? At least that is my thought process to date and that is regardless of the disaster, I will be able to start a fire someway using quasi modern technology.

The other thing that caused me to think about an end of Prepping was my family and the news recently. The good old news always has a way of perking my mood up. Not! I read another article today on Mac’s SHTF Plan site from an article originally on Dave Hodges site, The Common Sense Show about his thoughts on the very real possibility that the UN will be brought in to play somehow with the latest surge of illegals coming over our border and this will be their foot in the door moment, along with a false flag event to facilitate gun confiscation in the US. Dave lays out a compelling argument and even mentions as a possible catalyzing event some form of EMP attack, which I have even written about back early this month on the Prepper Journal. I have heard far less credible theories than his.

Do you want to be one of these people?
Do you want to be one of these people?

So these two thoughts occupied my mind as I walked with my dog through our neighborhood. I normally walk and listen to something on my iPod, but today I just walked and looked around. I looked at each home as I passed and tried to notice details that could become important if the grid really went down. I started looking again at alternate paths back home and contemplated what a hypothetical UN force in our country would look like and what could possibly happen. I looked at yards that are nicely manicured and imagined them overgrown for the most part, or their smooth contours displaced with freshly dug gardens in an effort to provide food for themselves and their families. I imagined large picture windows boarded up to protect from desperate people trying to break in. It wasn’t a happy walk at all and the cloudy sky added a nice atmosphere of approaching doom to the rest of my thoughts.

This was an unusually pessimistic day for me, but it made me think again about all my preps and surviving. Too often I talk about events that could happen although I honestly hope they won’t. I tell myself that I hope to have a few more years to prepare, to watch my children grow and to try to be in some way better able to defend and protect them as I go about my daily chores of work, raising a family and trying to prepare. But if tomorrow finds us all in the event we were are so worried about, prepping is over and the real challenge will be in front of us all. These imagined or envisioned calamities would become reality and life would necessarily have to change. If the disaster is large and prolonged enough, could those primitive skills be useful after all? I could easily see that happening.

So what am I saying? There are several things that I have put off for one reason or another and today I was simply convicted that if I don’t move on some of these things I could be sitting there with a wallet of worthless paper kicking myself for not stocking more food. I could have a decent amount of money in the bank that I can no longer get to because of some bank holiday or hyper inflationary event and not have something my family really needs. I guess I am saying that to me is seems like time is drawing near and I don’t think we have too much longer to wait for some of our worst fears to materialize. This is just my uniformed opinion so take that with a grain of salt.

I have always said that I hope I am wrong. I want to believe that I have simply become too immersed in the news and that it is effecting my mood. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten dessert so late last night and my dreams were affected? Who knows? I really would like nothing better than to be proven wrong even as I know that if that happens I will look like a complete idiot for believing in all the dire consequences I feel are in store for our country.  So be it.

I gave an interview this week to Dave Becker over at Survive Our Collapse and I said “I would love nothing better than to be sitting in a rocking chair when I am 100 years old, holding my great, great grandchildren on my lap while I am surrounded by my whole family as they laugh at me for all my crazy ideas that never came to pass.”

I truly hope that is what happens not just for me, but for all of you too. I simply just can’t shake this feeling that we have a much darker future to go through and I plan on upping my game. If it all goes to Hell tomorrow I don’t want to say I didn’t do all I could to get my family prepared. If I do get a surprise quiz tomorrow that tests what I have learned on Prepping; I want to ace it, not fail. How about you?

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