Helping Liberal and Elderly Family Members, by M.J.

As has been written many times here at SurvivalBlog, we preppers can’t do it alone. We need people we can work with, whether it be neighbors, friends, or family. Yet it’s frustrating to see one’s family and friends not taking prepping seriously. Their lack of preparation would make them an extra burden on us during a real emergency.

If there’s one thing that my IT career has taught me, it’s that our computerized worldwide system of just-in-time delivery of goods, as well as utilities such as power, telecommunications, and water are extremely fragile. Even authorized updates to software apps can wreak havoc; a hacker bent on causing trouble could do even more damage. I keep canned food and water at my home, as well as extra toilet paper and other supplies. For me, I think it’s enough for about two months. (The water is for drinking only; not enough for washing or cooking.)

I live in New Mexico. My cousin and his family (wife and two entertainingly rowdy little boys) live in the same town. Their help was invaluable in helping me get set up in my apartment when I first moved to town, and also in getting me set up in my house. We’ve helped each other many times. But they are public school teachers, and are very liberal. I dare not bring up the matter of firearms with them, or my reading of SurvivalBlog. Forget about talking about precious metals with them. I once used the Crowdstrike IT crisis to gently encourage them to stockpile canned food and water, but I think my advice fell on deaf ears. If I had to take care of my cousin and his family, my prepping supplies would be depleted a lot faster. Yet I wouldn’t like to turn them away in a real disaster. Families should stick together whenever possible. I wish I could get them to prep, but prepping cannot be coerced.

My parents and my sister live in Los Angeles. One of my parents’ neighbors is a prepper who helped me get started on the prepping journey. His help has been especially valuable with respect to learning about precious metals. He tried to get my father started on precious metals investing, but that didn’t go anywhere.

My parents are in their eighties. Each of my parents compensates for the physical failings of the other: my father is more physically fit than my mother, but my mother can hear better than my father. My parents were considering moving closer to my sister, but after the recent fires in which my sister and her family were briefly under evacuation alert, I encouraged them to reconsider.

They live in a good neighborhood with no danger of wildfires. Their mortgage is paid off and they know and get along with their neighbors well. Those fulfill two prepper goals. But they have a normalcy bias. My father grew up in a poor Christian village in the Middle East, so he knows about crummy infrastructure, political instability, and inflation. Yet our country, even in poor shape as it is now, is still a good deal better than the Middle East. I think that is one reason why my father never got into prepping. My mother is a dyed-in-the-wool California liberal academic who is vehemently anti-gun and who complacently believes in government as a provider. Just as with my cousin and his family, I can’t discuss SurvivalBlog or firearms with them.

I recently visited my parents. I found that the tires on their vehicles were insufficiently inflated, but they hadn’t noticed. I inflated the tires for them with my portable jumppack/compressor. My parents don’t have anything like this, and my mother couldn’t lift it anyway. They don’t keep any canned food. Several years ago, I bought them four 5-gallon water containers for emergency use. Those containers are now too heavy for my parents. I tried to talk them into buying 2.5-gallon containers, but they didn’t bother. If I can’t persuade them even to take the most basic step – having extra water – how can I persuade them to take prepping more seriously? Has anyone else reading SurvivalBlog had any luck with persuading loved ones to at least do the minimal prepping of water and canned food?

I was a youngster and still living with my parents during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. That knocked down overpasses of I-10 and I-5. (Pictured, above.)  Both of these freeways are major routes to and through Los Angeles. Our country was in much better shape back then. If a freeway gets knocked out by a major earthquake nowadays, then it will take much longer to fix thanks to supply chain bottlenecks, political incompetence, and corruption.

I refuse to move back to California. Yet I am concerned about the day that my parents might need more care, and I don’t want to dump the whole burden on my sister. I am extremely reluctant to put my parents in a nursing home. My grandparents were in a nursing home. Those places aren’t as funny as depicted in The Simpsons; even the nice ones are depressing. More importantly, most aren’t prepared for a grid-down event or rapid evacuation. After all, these homes are for-profit businesses. Being prepared in the sense of having extra water, food, generators, and medicines on hand isn’t as profitable. Businesses believe in just-in-time ordering, which is great as long as the system works. But if it breaks down, then watch out. For more on this, read the book Sold Out by James Rickards.

Presently, my biggest preparedness goal is securing an all-remote job that pays more and that would allow me to work from California if I had to go there for a few weeks or months to help my parents, or to move to a nice, sane small town somewhere. I can do that in my current job, but the pay just isn’t enough in the present day, even for a single man. Like Single Farmer, I’m looking for my wife, and I need a better salary so that I can support a family. In the meantime, I live frugally and save as much as I can. In the absence of a genuine TEOTWAWKI, the biggest prep is saving more money.