I have been reading and watching stuff and it all seems so overwhelming. How do I start ? My wife and I desided to dedicate $200 dollars a month towards the prepping. What now. Water, food, medicine. What’s first?
What’s first?
Build shelves.
Then ammo and food. I say ammo first because you can hunt if need be. Or take someone’s food…
That was a joke. Nobody get riled up. This is not my area of expertise but I think food and ammo are cornerstones.
He’s right. If you’re not secure, there’s no sense in accumulating things.
Got shelves And ammo. started teaching all family members to use firearms . a lot of places say to first stock up on water. I have a well and a way to bring water up even wit no power , do I still need to stock water? what type of food do I start with?
Sounds like you have water & ammo somewhat covered at a minimum, so I say next should be food, and the easiest & least expensive way to do that is to build up & maintain a deep stockpile of canned & dry food, probably from your local grocery store. Canned & dry foods are probably already part of your regular diet, so organize a rotation, and you can have a year or two worth of food on hand. It ain’t cool like MRE’s, but it makes the most sense to me.
Don’t get caught up in buying gadgets, you’ll waste a lot of money. Focus on practical items that you know, or can easily learn, how to actually use. Don’t ask me about the foolish things I’ve spent my money on figuring this out.
Medical & trauma kit is good to have, but again, buy what you know how to use, or learn how to use what you’ve bought. I’d love to have a penny for every one of the dollars spent on prepping every year by folks who have no idea how to use what they’ve bought.
I can seem overwhelming. The secret is to do it like you’d eat an elephant- one bite at a time.
How you handle the food aspect depends on whether you plan to hunker down or bug out. The expensive dehydrated meals may be the best for lightweight travel and a retreat to the deep woods, but if you are staying home, stick to ordinary stuff that keeps well. The Mormons fairly routinely keep a year’s supply of food, so you might want to look at how they do it on a budget. I’ve been kind of testing the expiration dates on products I normally buy and have found that some are exaggerated while others are extremely conservative - You don’t know for sure until you try it.
What am I preparing for? For how many people?
Food & food storage Do I have enough to feed my family until order is restored? 2000 calories a day as a basis.
Water and water Purification & storage
Food & food storage
Firearms: Can I defend my family, property and preps?
Medical and personal hygeine items. Personal hygeine is often overlooked.
Heating:How will I heat my home? How will I provide light and electricity?
Gardening and implements
Comms and contacts
Food, water, shelter, security, power (heat, electricity, etc), debt.
Pay down debt. If you have an ordinary financial issue (job loss, cut in hours, new bill) this will help you relax while your other preps take your burden. If you’ve got a month’s worth of food that will buy you time to get a new job and will supplement any unemployment etc. Keeping your bills low isn’t sexy but it really is the first step in becoming self-sufficient and reliant.
Food: initially start with food you already eat. Build up a month of spare food that you KNOW you eat regularly. If you buy it know how to cook it. If you hate beans and rice then don’t buy any! Look for sales, coupons etc. Penny pinch. Don’t forget some treats and not just have 60 lbs of rice and beans!
Water: spare, source, treatment system. Have extra water on hand and a way to resupply. Then you need to be able to treat which can be as simple as boiling (which leads to energy). Bleach! Can be used to treat water and to disinfect an area.
Shelter: can be simple like a roll of plastic sheeting (useful for improvised shelters and repairs if your home is damaged) or could be a tent or RV. Sleeping bags, wool blankets, etc.
Energy: camp stove, wood stove, spare batteries, inverter in your car . . . Provides the ability to cook, treat water, charge the cell phone or radio batteries, can use to run the fridge for a bit to keep your food cold.
Security. You’re on the M4 forum so I think you know what this is about.
Start small building redundancy in the key elements then start expanding your other abilities. Learn skills and don’t rely upon gadgets. Youtube can be your friend but practice and don’t think that because you read it or watched a video that you can DO it.
I second the hygiene and medical/first aid concerns. If you get sick you’re in a world of hurt and you can’t help your family.
Good luck!
One thing I would like to add, be prepared for a non-end of the the world event ie Katrina type situation. Where you will get back to normal, but you will be on your own for quite a while.
I know I need to better my “prepping” all around but this seems like the a more likely future possibility than the end of the world. Well at the time…
Well you are off to a good start by reading this sub-forum. There is a lot of solid information on this particular site. It is good that you are doing this with your wife and that y’all have established a budget . . . you’re way ahead of the curve. The name of the game is common sense. Don’t go into to debt and don’t neglect your daily life. One thing that helped the wife and I right out of the gate is looking for sales and coupons. With manufacture coupons from the Sunday paper you can save quit a bit of money on everything from canned foods, first-aid supplies, personal hygiene items, et al. If you hit garage sales/flee markets in your area you can score a lot of stuff on the cheap.
One thing to address is what happens to your body if an abrupt change of diet occurs. Going from a regular diet to, say nothing but MRE’S or even freeze dried only can play Hell on your system. Keep some laxative and anti-diarrheal handy. Either can ruin an otherwise good day. I was reminded of that very recently. :stop:
I think your on the right track and lots of good advice here. Defiantly eliminate as much debt as possible makes doing things a lot easier. Set small goals, achieve them, then set some more. Stick to what you know, and maybe set a goal to learn one new area/thing a month to build your skills. Good luck.
I think a good way to start would be to plan for small time-length disasters first, then work your way up to long-term disaster preps. What I mean is, don’t try and prep for a total economic collapse in which you would have to sustain yourself and family for months at a time. Begin with the standard 3 day back-up supply. Then work your way up to a week, two weeks, a month, etc. Accumulate food, water, security measures first then worry about comms, advanced medical supplies, and everything else that is a survival aid but not necessarily an essential. When it comes to food, if you do decide to stock up on MRE’s avoid the cheese spread.
This, except the part about the cheese spread.
You need a plan. Actually you need several plans and you need to make sure they’re realistic. All the supplies in the world won’t matter if you don’t know what the next step is, at that point you’re dead and you don’t even know it. Start with a list of three categories; Common - Uncommon - Unlikely. Put your concerns and history in there before you assess your budget and cover your “common” section first.
Common - Flat tires. How new are your tires and is your spare good, how long can your Vic run without seeing a mechanic. Those will get you before the zombies. Health. Think of the most miserably sick you’ve been in the last five years and how you kicked it. Being able to shoot weak-side with your pistol out to 100m is neat, until you have a fever of 105 and fry your brain.
Unlikely - Flaming socialist zombies riding the horses of Revelation into your living room to confiscate your guns and force you to become a Muslim.
Somewhere in between there is floods, earthquakes, ice storms, etc.
Don’t throw away the cheese spread. It’s like a paste of duct tape, there’s really nothing it can’t do. You can use it to patch a boat, build a brick wall, pave a runway for a C-130, bait for mice and catfish, or you can plug your bum when the inevitable dirty water evacuates your contents into your unsuspecting undies. While everyone was calling Rush Limbaugh about buying gold and silver, I was buying cheese spread. I’m good.
I know security is an important concern and since you are in the prepping stage, I would suggest you to prep your house first. Like FloridaWoodsman said, u need to secure your family and belongings. The best way is to use home improvement methods, like installing impact windows and doors. These impact windows pompano beach provide security from storm, flying debris and burglars.