About 5 years ago, when I started prepping, my wife laughed every time a package came for me with “survival stuff”. She asked me why I was wasting my time & money on it. I asked her “If something happened right now, could you take care of the kids with your preparedness”? This weekend for the first time ever, she asked to see my inventory & actually started making a list to supplement our stash. She’s now reading my books & genuinely taking an interest in our families wellbeing in the event of a disaster.
What do your spouses/GF’s think about your preparedness?
Wife used to chuckle, but then she got a job in the financial industry and is more aware of the value of preparedness now. She even was proud of the things we had on hand after snooping around one day.
It’s got to the point were SHE brings bulk stuff home sometimes and says things like"It was on sale, and we use it so I bought some."
She leaves most things to me, but does help in certain ways like I mentioned.
My wife like’d to have killed me this spring. She had me making raised garden beds, hauling dirt, making trellises, etc.
She could probably supply a small group with beans, tomatoes, potatoes, okra, squash, etc. for a while. And all of this in our small backyard in a subdivision.
She’s learned a lot and has been very pro-active. The main thing we are missing now is water purification. That’s the next purchase.
She gets on a couple of garden forums and they swap ideas. She said what’s funny is the “leaders” on the garden forum will casually mention having AR’s, handguns, ammo, etc. as well as hand tools, canning supplies, etc.
My wife gives me some looks but she is generally supportive. We have upped the gardening together this year, we bought some freeze dried food and loaded up the pantry recently. She is not gung ho but she does let me follow my instincts. Which say - watch out, things dont look so hot…
my wife does not know. She has an idea but not to the extent of what I have planned or what I have done. I would just rather keep it that way. That way she has no idea what kind of money has been spent.
When my wife gave me crap about the money I spent prepping, I asked her to total up how much we spend annually on auto, home owners, health, business liability, & life insurance. Then I asked her what’s the harm in a few hundred or thousand to protect our kids in the event of a disaster. It’s just another insurance policy. There was a long silence. She started coming around after that.
My wife is in it up to her neck. In fact some times her zealousness to prepare exceeds mine. Just another reason why I think I am one of the luckiest SOBs to have married her.
Mine is cool with it, only she jokes with our family about our “survival room”…
I have her trained to buy 1-2 trays of canned food on every Costco trip.
One thing I have noticed is you have to ease them into it and point out specific current events where people were unprepared for the situation.
Agreed Dave. One recent eye opener for my wife was the earthquakes in Japan. Some media articles said that in a worst case scenario, the jet stream could carry the radiation here. Her motherly instinct kicked in and she started researching Potassium Iodide. By that time, every local store was sold out & as well as online distributors. This was a very good example of having your stuff on hand before you need it because if you don’t, you’re likely not going to find it.
You guy sure are lucky my wife refers to all my stuff as junk,stupid, or a waste of money time and space. Any suggestions on how I could open her eyes?
My wife understands the whole thing. She does not know too much about it and leaves most of the purchases to me. I have been going over stuff with her for some time. Every now and then she will bring up the subject. She knows where we keep everything and looks at the inventory sheets from time to time. She does actively look at the ammo supply because she is an avid shooter. She will come back from Wal-Mart or something and say; “I found that they had the 100 round boxes of XXXX for a good price so I got 4 of them. She also knows what types, brand, and grain of ammo for our rifles and pistols. That is a very helpful thing. I guess that is a start. As for the rest she will ask if that is really necessary or not and when I explain she is ok with it.
We were watching a show on EMP on Discovery, or something like that, and during the show she started to run the hypothetical thing. At that time she was duly impressed with what we had and what we could do with it. After that she got a little more on board, by that she does not give me the crazy look for having MREs and Freeze Dried food stacked up. The best part is when one of my friends says something off a bit and she corrects them. She lives for that and I then have to razz them for some time. As an example one of my friends was saying that he got some bulk .40 grain 5.56 for a good price and my wife started to question him on what he was going to do with it and that the rate of twist and barrel length of his M4 was.…….:jester:
To help them understand that best thing that I found is to just sit down and play “what would you do”. At that point they start to see that if the “grid” goes down or something like that happens. How then something as simple as water will be hard to get. That is kind of an eye opener.
See post # 7 Dave. This worked for me among other things. Also discussing natural disasters & what your lives would look like if a Katrina type event happened in your town. If you have kids, ask her how she plans to take care of them in the event of something major. The first few months of my prepping, my wife associated it with militia extremist stuff like the liberal media portrays it. She came around but it took some creativity & persistance on my part to open her eyes.
Working on it with mine bit by bit, though we’re not quite as able to do as much as we’d like because we’re in an apartment so space is a limitation. She’s definitely into planning ahead in various other capacities.
It is going to take alot of creativity and presistance for me. I have tired get her to stock food from a local store whole foods store. It would save alot of gas, but she says she does not want the containers around “NO,THEY LOOK UGLY”:mad:. So I have to attepmt to do what I can on my own. Her pay check could help alot as well. We also have young twins so I think so should really take it a little more seriously.
My wife was against it but I did it anyway. I felt it was my duty as a father to prepare for my kids. There was no room for compromise. It would have been a whole lot easier with her support early on, but at least I have it now. It seems alot of women don’t want to think about the possibility of disaster stiking. Some think it will never happen. Some know it’s likely, but choose to ignore it.
My wife was raised by mennonites, although you’d never guess it by looking at her. On the outside she is pretty urban and stylish and her collection of heels is probably similar in price to my collection of guns. However, she is a big believer in sensible preps. We live in an earthquake-prone region and we are both conscious of this; she carries a knife and a flashlight with her everywhere and rotates the food in the pantry with the long term stuff. We have a number of contingency plans for dealing with interruptions in travel, food, and water in the case of a major quake, and in general I would say she is very aware and very supportive.
We definitely don’t go off the deep end with survival preparations; neither of us seriously fears long-term collapse and a need to survive the chaotic reorganization of society with thousands of rounds of 5.56.
On the other hand…we do keep about 20,000 rounds of rifle and pistol ammo on hand. But that has more to do with volume purchasing for savings, or taking advantage of surplus gluts, than any belief that we will need tens of thousands of rounds to survive a mad max future.
My wife is definitely an unusual person, though. I think it is rare to suffer from an equal craving for stratosphere-altitude designer heels and sig sauer pistols. Other than the monetary cost, I feel fairly lucky.