(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
The World As We Now Know It
Succeed here first. A good man succeeds regardless of where he is. Marcus Aurelius would be a good man here or in ancient Rome. Same for Sejong the Great. Same if an Adeptus Astartes was put in your place. A good man succeeds where he finds himself.
“I would succeed if only…” is loser talk. It’s taken many a man who might have succeeded and turned him into one who did not. You’ve probably heard “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”. That saying is importantly wrong. You cannot think your way to victory. It’s also importantly correct: you can think yourself into a loss. Avoid loser talk. Avoid loser think. Avoid hanging out with losers. Avoid them in cyberspace. And avoid them in meatspace.
This principle is concerned with putting first things first. Yes, you are incredibly exposed for things going sideways right now and there are no guarantees about when that might happen. If the balloon goes up tomorrow you’ll wish you had maxed out your cards on tangible goods. But if (as is more likely) it doesn’t go up tomorrow, you will regret debt that puts you into slavery for decades. One of those is more likely and that is the one you must attend to first.
I don’t know your exact situation. You may need to accept student loan debt to get a useful degree and begin in four years. You may need to accept a job you detest as a foot in the door so you can leverage your way to a better job at a different place. You may need to look into the trades. You may need to work 20 hours a week on your side hustle til it becomes your actual job. I don’t know. Any of those ideas may be dumb for you but needed for someone else. You need to find someone who can give you specific advice for you, your personality, your goals, and your situation.
I do know this: You are not locked in an unwinnable situation. There’s a path forward for you but “crab bucket” thinking (as Terry Pratchett put it) is a real thing. You’re fighting your environment. You’re fighting your friends. You might even be fighting your family. You’re fighting your habits of behavior and habits of mind. Those seem like long odds but you can win this fight. And if you can’t win this fight, you won’t do nearly as well during the The End Of The World As We Now Know It (TEOTWAWKI) as you imagine.
This, right here, is your test. Your training. Whether you can achieve enough success in The World As We Now Know It so you can prepare for TEOTWAWKI. You don’t need to be a millionaire. You do need to be gainfully employed in a job that doesn’t suck your soul so that you can live a good life now and prepare for the worst case. And if you can survive well in TEOTWAWKI, you can survive well now. So do so.
Intelligent people don’t get trapped in denial. Intelligent people adapt and accomplish good things. They perform their current role well and use it to get a better one. That path is a real possibility for you. Respected man is absolutely achievable. And, though you may not believe it yet, so is valued community member and beloved husband. Those are real. They are waiting for you. But only if you embrace the test you face now.
Habits
We’re getting to the fun stuff, I promise. Before you can train and practice, you must have control over your life as it stands. You have to make room for shooting competitions, camping trips, classes, or whatever it is that you wish you could add. If you could snap your fingers and do what you want, you would. Instead you have to work your way there.
“We make our habits and our habits make us.” Or “we are what we do repeatedly”. Either way, habits will give you reps you need to get the skills you want. It will solve the problems you face without thinking so you can use that mental energy for other things. I recommend BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” as your guide to giving yourself habits that help you do what you want. As a bonus, good habits will result in more time.
In a nutshell, your daily habits matter more than almost everything else because you’re spending most of your life doing them. As excellent as going to Gunsite was, it has been the 5 days a week daily dry fire that has taken me to “Competent pistol shooter”. The daily dry fire, even when it was just 5 min and 40 shots, built skill in a deeper and more lasting way than the 1 week experience.
I highly encourage you to find small useful things to add to your life via habits. Theses should be things that your future self will appreciate. Something as silly as flossing a single tooth. Wiping a single counter. Washing your grapes as soon as you get home from the store. Reading a single verse from the Bible. A small and useful habit is a superpower you can unlock if you choose.
Related to habits but different are your defaults. What you do in the absence of compelling reason. You have a default outlook, default behavior, and a default manner. These are a large part of what makes you who you are. Take an honest look at yourself and decide if your defaults are helping you or hurting you. Has your pragmatic outlook shaded into cynicism? Has your honesty turned into rudeness? Has your strength turned into arrogant superiority? For me they had and that meant they needed to be changed.
Bonus: Remember that “you are the product” in both senses. You are the product being sold when you use “free” services like YouTube and TikTok. You are also the product of what you consume and what you do. The less you do the more important your consumption is to your identity. The less you do the more your entertainment constitutes you and controls you. The voices you listen to most are what your brain will consider normal and you’ll never convince it otherwise. So beware the easy slide into mindless mental consumer.
Hobbies
Here is where the fun begins. This is where you can finally start “preparing” with something that feels like preparing. Whether that’s carpentry, blacksmithing, bushcraft, food preservation, gardening, firearms practice, beekeeping, sewing, archery practice, physical competition, martial arts, knitting, weaving, orienteering, or something else. There a lot of options and my list isn’t exhaustive. I want you note though that “research” isn’t included. Neither is politics. Those feel useful but are in fact necessary evils. Hobbies grow valued skills. Research and politics don’t.
The hobby accomplishes several things. It plugs you into a community, supporting your first prep. It grows a valued skill which will help you if the balloon does go up tomorrow. It also forces you to make deliverables and practice regularly instead of crafting perfect plans that never touch reality. Perhaps most importantly, a practiced hobby helps your mental health. With all those benefits I highly endorse spending the money needed to join a hobby instead of increasing your stockpile of equipment.
I only have one caution and that is to avoid confusing pastimes with hobbies. It’s the socially valued skill that separates the hobby from the pastime. Computer games are pastimes, they do not build a socially valued skill. Puzzles are pastimes, the skill isn’t valuable to the group. There’s nothing wrong with pastimes, down time is an important part of keeping your mental health, but it is not a hobby.
The hobby is your most important way to practice your preps. The vast majority of us do not get to live at a self sufficient retreat, practicing our preparations in peace. Instead we make compromises and choices. We give up ideal retreat location for marital harmony or to support other family members. We follow a job to a worse state so we can build up resources at cost of other priorities. A practiced hobby can be a constant throughout the compromises of life. All the while it builds skill that travels for free.
Find a hobby that you enjoy and will leave you a more valuable person if it all goes pearshaped. This is especially important when you are young and aren’t yet establishing a permanent location.
Don’t Fight Logistics and The Law of Diminishing Returns
If you’re like I was, you don’t want a stock answer. You want the perfect answer. You see the limitations of the stock answers and just a little more research will give you the perfect answer. “Obviously X is a better solution than the standard advice, now if everyone would just…” or “With just a little tinkering, you could make Y which would be so superior to…” or “why doesn’t anyone offer…”
I’m here to tell you “that’s bad thinking”. Plain and simple. You’re majoring on the minors and losing time. You think you’re proving how knowledgeable you are but you are actually displaying ignorance. The only ones impressed are other people similarly stuck on their own ego.
Start with the stock answer.
Start with what’s available.
Anything beats nothing.
Start.
What does that mean? It means that while I agree that a Galil in 7.62 NATO is a better rifle than a PSA 16 inch AR in 5.56 NATO, you will be better off with the inexpensive PSA and range time. It means that while a 2011 is the new cool gun that all the shooters seem to want, a stock Glock is enough to earn the president’s tab. It means that the local Brazilian Jui Jitsu gym or even local Tae Kwon Do club is better than whatever martial art you think is ideal that doesn’t exist near you. Adjust the example so that it applies to you where you are.
Whatever is standard, whatever is normal, whatever is available in your area is where you need to start. The standard answer will get you 80% of what you want. Yes, professionals move heaven and earth to whittle away at that remaining 20% but it takes more effort to get that next 10% than the first 80%. Most importantly, right now you have 0%
My Dad used a folksy example of buying a better burger to illustrate diminishing returns. If you buy the cheapest burger out there, it’s not going to be great. Say it costs 5 dollars. Doubling that to spend 10 bucks will get you a burger that’s twice as good. Doubling that to 20 bucks will get you a better burger but only half again as good. Doubling it to 40, again, will get you a better burger but now it’s only incrementally better than the 20 dollar burger. Each increase in cost gets you less of an increase in quality. You’ve got to put in more and more to get a smaller and smaller increase in return.
My hypothetical perfect plans were chasing diminishing returns and keeping me from getting that 80%. I wanted the A+ gear at a bargain basement price and ultimately I was valuing gear over practice. I didn’t need A+ gear, I needed A+ practice with B gear.
Earn your upgrades
Practicing the skill, whatever it is, will get you most of the way there. Start there. What’s holding back your carpentry is not your lack of a biscuit cutter. Nor is it your ignorance of the new cutting edge technique, or lost ancient technique, or professional secret. What’s holding it back is the lack of reps. You need a minimal basic tool set, whatever the mid-tier common answer is, and then practice.
The best advice I found with respect to this is “buy used tools, as you wear them out decide if it’s worth upgrading”. A related version is “replace the bit of kit that is most annoying to use”. You only found out it was annoying as you used it. The most annoying is the one you use most often. So that’s a good place where you can say “This upgrade is worth the money”.
I’ll add to that you should allow yourself to spend more money on consumables with each subsequent completed project. You don’t start with mahogany. You start with pine. Your first whip you don’t start with kangaroo leather, you start with coreless paracord. But after you do the first you can use higher quality materials for the next. Your first attempt will not be great so top tier materials will be wasted.
Grow your skillset and quality of materials project by project.
What will you actually be doing?
You’ll spend more time [Insert] than you will…
“You’ll spend more time commuting than camping”
“You’ll spend more time gardening than patrolling”
“You’ll spend more time patrolling than shooting”
This doesn’t give you everything but it gives you an idea where you will get outsized returns on investment. I’ve been heartened watching people realize that “you use your kitchen knife more than your survival knife” and buying a nice kitchen knife so they can enjoy the money they spent. Or realizing that “if I love this so much, I should use it more” Either is a perfectly respectable way to move.
This is related to the “Cost per use” way of thinking. The more often you use something the more you can reasonably justify the money spent. My kettlebells were expensive but the cost per use is pennies now. And the benefit to my health has been enormous. Money well spent.
So think about what you’re actually doing. Then think about what you’ll actually be doing in a hypothetical scenario. Figure out what makes sense after you’ve thought through both of those. What hobby you pursue. What equipment you need. What abilities you need.
I’ll point back again to the hobby here. If you’re pursuing the hobby you are increasing the amount of time spent in preparation and your time using your preps. Having a really nice gun is more reasonable if you compete and use it all the time. Having a nicer camping setup is more reasonable the more you use it. Drive that cost per use down. Don’t constantly use tools you hate using. Don’t spend a lot of money on things you rarely or never use. Make sure the things you’re spending time on are furthering your larger goals.
Take care of your future self and your future loved ones
Take care of your future self. When you do something now that makes your future self’s life easier it results in an upward spiral of good. And the reverse is also true. The oddest thing to me is how a little investment now can make life so much better for your future self. While heading in the opposite direction how much we damage our future selves for things we don’t even really enjoy.
I made a simple habit to wash to the grapes before they go into the fridge. That simple act takes care of my children’s future selves for the week with rapid access to a healthy snack. It doesn’t take that much extra, just another 5 minutes of work and one bowl to wash. How often before I made that habit did grapes go bad because the thought of washing them led to “Eh, I’ll do that later”. And for what? A YouTube video? Not only is that 5 min not very important it’s not even that enjoyable. By doing the washing I get the 5 min later in the week when I don’t have to it then and there is better food for my children.
Each thing, big or small, that I prepare ahead of time for my wife, children, or myself is a self evident good. It shows I foresaw and provided for the need. The real superpower here? The more immediate examples, the ones that take place tomorrow or this weekend are the best ones. Those are the ones that strengthen the relationships and give good memories. You can invest very little and get good payoff.
Take care of your future self and your family’s future self. Focus on the immediate first. Then look a little further ahead. Then a little further. It starts getting hazy and more complex because the possibilities are more numerous and of dubious probability. We still plan for it but we start closer in and then move further out to take care of our future selves.
Bonus: Find the gift they can’t afford but will use often. My most treasured possessions were things that my grandparents or parents gave because they knew it would be useful to me. My grandfather’s gift still takes care of me. It’s my job to find gifts that will do the same for my children and my wife. Something that they use regularly, something that fills a need for them, something they value and something they can’t or won’t spend the money. I want to take care of them from beyond the grave.
Plan for the lifespan
Your role is going to change. What you will do when you are 20 is different from what you will do at 50 which is different from what you will do in your 70s. That should be something we have an eye towards as we age. What stages will you pass through? How can I set myself up for success in the next stage? How can I discharge this stage well?
I’ve found interesting that from the ancient Spartans to the modern Ukrainians 60 years is the cut off for the military. You are of military age until 60, in my view that means you need to be competent physically at least that long. I also like the outlook that breaks up the male lifespan into 30 year stretches. You spend your first 30 getting established, your next 30 building, and your last 30 declining.
Military age is where I’ll spend the majority of my life but breaking it into “establishing” and “building” phases makes sense to me. It’s ok to be stretched at 25, taking chances, testing yourself, scraping by in order to win later. By the time you’re 35 it’s a different world. Your strategy needs to shift because it’s later in the game. You can’t make dumb mistakes anymore but the hard work starts paying off and you’ll be better off than you thought you would.
What the ideal prepper has and does in each of those stages differs. You need to figure out what a good prepper has and does while establishing himself, as you will be doing for 10 more years. Hint: the answer isn’t to have a 45 year old prepper’s setup. He’s in a different stage than you are. You need to figure out how to get there when you’re that age. You do that by being a good establishing prepper. Figure out what that means and then hold yourself to that standard. Not the building prepper’s standard, you figure out what that means when you’re there.
Plan for the decline
“How will I handle the inevitable decline?” That is a question you must ask if you’re lucky enough to reach a decline. Yes, “lucky”, not everyone gets a decline. Right now my goal is to recognize my limits and manage the decline in a way that I am as little of a burden as possible. That will mean continuing to exercise almost the entire time but shifting as I change. When will it be the right time to trade in muy thai for tai chi? I don’t know. But when that time comes I hope it won’t require a broken bone to realize it.
Similar questions arise with other aspects of my life. When will I no longer be able to care for my house and property? I don’t know but a perfect retreat that I cannot keep up and my children don’t want is not a net win. When will I no longer be able to drive my car? I don’t know (you may be picking up a theme here) but I hope it doesn’t take crashing a car and killing someone because I wouldn’t listen to the feedback of the world. God forbid my pride and obsession with independence means I refuse to accept reality and become a burden or liability.
There’s a point where we need to put our skills and resources towards frivolities that will be well appreciated by the young ones. Maybe that means building an arcade cabinet for your grandchildren to use when they visit. Maybe it means making an obstacle course in the backyard or a slot car set in your garage. Maybe it means making a skee ball game for the community center. More ammo or a backup water purification setup would be a poorer way to spend that money at that stage. What is the better way for your money and effort at this stage?
Socrates argued that when you realized your children could handle your affairs better than you, you would gladly hand them over. That is a tall order. I hope I am equal to it. I can say from the other side that watching an old man hang on past the point of competency is terrible. There’s a long nasty time where the old man can make a dog’s dinner of it, damage it irrevocably, but not mess up badly enough that his children can legally act to stop it. I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to tarnish your legacy and destroy what you have spent your life building.
Look to your legacy
You are becoming something. You have a trajectory. You can wind up a mean bitter cranky old man. Or you can end as a wise valued old man. Your vices right now, if not mastered, will become exaggerated in old age. Your virtues, nurtured and grown, will come to fruition in old age. You’re deciding that now. Each time you grow your virtue or vice, you are choosing what kind of old man you will be. If you continue acting the way you are, how will it look in old age? I did not like what I saw when I pushed it out that far. That is the first thing.
The second thing is the inheritance. Who will inherit your library? Your tools? Will they care? Will it become someone’s backup set of tools? Or their 3rd? Will it be flogged it for half or less of its value? Will it be left to languish under a bed or in a basement somewhere. What about your canner? Your sewing machine?
The answer I believe is give gifts to those that will use them while you are still alive. When my wife and I downsize that is one thing I want to have in the forefront of my mind. It was in a book on candy making that I really got hit with that point. It’s the continuance of the tradition that matters. Give the tools to those who will use them to practice the tradition. Give the books to those who will read them. Give things to those who will use and value them.
Related to that: Consider your grandchildren more than your children. I read the average inheritor is 60 years old. Now a thousand bucks is never to be sneered at but who would benefit from it more? An established 60 year old or a 30 year old father? This is part of your job: to figure out where your bequest can do the most good.
There was a time we used to talk of “dying well”. I’ve seen people who aged and died well. I’ve seen people who aged and died badly, clinging to life until it was a twisted misery for that person and all around. I do not wish to die like that. It is our final task. Perhaps we cannot reach Caeser’s “have I played the role well? Then applaud now as I exit” but I hope that my children can tell my grandchildren “your grandpa showed us how to die well.”
Conclusion
I want to end my final entry in this final writing contest on an upbeat note. Preppers are often (erroneously) thought of as being doom and gloom type people. How can they be happy if they think civilization may be only temporary? And especially young people looking down this rabbit hole can become “doomers” and “black pilled”. I urge you not to succumb to those temptations. They are temptations that call to us but those are perversions of preparation. The good preppers are good men. They are men who have looked at the worst case, made reasonable preparations, and are striving to live a good life. That is not us at our worst; it’s us at our best.
Here is the greatest lesson that preppers have taught me. I hope you can accept it sooner than I did. It’s not flashy. It’s not cool. Instead, it’s important:
Lead a life so that whether things go wrong or right others will be glad you lived as you did.
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