(Continued from Part 1.)
CLASSES OF PREPPERS
Truly prepared preppers – These preppers took things seriously, even if the chance of a SHTF event wasn’t highly probable. They weighed the probabilities against the consequences of not being prepared and chose to prepare. For many, the self-reliance skills learned, knowledge gained, and talents developed while prepping made it worth it, SHTF or not. The psychological benefit of being ready for anything is also a big plus.
The most prepared preppers will have a written plan to employ as soon as they realize that today’s The Day. They’ve done simulations and practice runs and everyone knows what their job is without a second thought. A short meeting is held anyway, calmly explaining it’s time to put the plan into action and quickly reviewing everyone’s responsibilities for Day One. Their Emergency Phase will be fairly calm and short, only lasting for a week or so, before they fully transition into stage two, Survival Mode.
A recent SurvivalBlog article, JIT Training For Trusted Friends, Family, and Neighbors, presents one approach on how to form an impromptu group.
Inadequately prepared preppers – I call these “unprepared preppers” because while they may be preppers, and they may have their buckets of beans and rice and totes full of water, in truth they’re not well enough prepared for TEOTWAWKI. Perhaps they were either too new at prepping, or too lazy to adequately prepare, or perhaps just liked calling themselves preppers after inventing seven different ways to make tinfoil hats. Many preppers will say they just couldn’t overcome the financial hurdles of what it took to adequately prepare. Some thought they didn’t have the storage space. Other unprepared preppers will not have gone to the trouble to really research what things they needed to have, or what skills needed to be learned. Perhaps the largest group of unprepared preppers will be those who didn’t adequately prepare based on a probability approach: “a serious SHTF event is unlikely to happen just yet so I’ll do some prepping, but just the inexpensive stuff like toilet paper and a multi-tool. If it starts looking more likely, I’ll get some of the other stuff.”
Short-Term, Non-SHTF Preppers – Short-term preppers are those who are prepared for an event like a hurricane or ice storm. To their credit, this type of prepping is adequate for what they’re preparing for, and a short-term event is far more likely to occur than a TEOTWAWKI event. We see short-term events frequently, the most recent ones in 2024 being hurricanes in the Southeast and the fires in southern California. To be fair, those preppers were very prepared when the short-term event came to pass. Not only were they good to go, but also had the means to help grateful friends and neighbors as well. There were several excellent articles posted on SurvivalBlog sharing these kinds of stories.
If the world is falling apart in slow motion, then short-term preppers can possibly have enough time to get some sort of a better-than-nothing program put together if they hustle. Already having a prepping mindset and understanding the basics of what they need to stock up on for a TEOTWAWKI event would be a big help.
Urban/Suburban Preppers – These preppers cannot survive in place. It’s not possible to have some of the most essential long-term preps such a water source, and there’s no realistic way to defend what they do have from the thousands and tens of thousands of desperate people who’ll do whatever it takes to get a drink of water or a bite to eat.
Non-Preppers – Those who are totally unprepared will be up Schumer Creek when the Schumer hits the fan. Some of these will become the most dangerous kinds of survivors who serious preppers will need to most defend their homesteads against.
IMPLEMENTING EMERGENCY-PHASE PROTOCOLS
The whole point of TEOTWAWKI prepping is to be ready for anything, to be ahead of the curve before the general populace figures out they’re not in Kansas anymore. Ideally, we want to be through with the Emergency phase before the masses come to a full realization they’re in deep Schumer and totally unprepared.
The degree to which we’ve prepared will determine how the Emergency Phase affects us and how quickly we get past it to transition to the Survival phase. It’ll be to our advantage to get through the emergency phase as quickly as possible.
Truly Prepared Preppers – As already mentioned, these will have a written plan, practiced with dry runs, to help things run as smoothly as possible during the Emergency Phase. Some are assigned to getting everyone rounded up including kids from school and Mom from the assisted-living center. Others in the group will be concerned with the highly-urgent task of getting as many hands on deck as possible to get the freezer contents converted to a long-term storage form. For those with multiple freezers, this will perhaps be the most immediate and stressful event to deal with due to the amount of time, energy, and limited working space needed to get everything processed. We don’t want to be trying to decide in real time what to do with all those blueberries, and how to deal with frozen pre-cooked brats as opposed to hamburger and t-bones.
We should take a glance in our freezers right now and ask ourselves how we’d proceed with preserving all that if the grid disappears. Then start putting together a written plan on how to proceed with freezer food if Day One gets here six weeks from yesterday. Having a laminated one-page plan which is always kept in the freezer where it can be readily seen on top of the frozen goods, or attached to the inside of the freezer lid, would be worth a king’s ransom if the SHTF. Acting, not thinking about how to proceed, is what we want to be doing on Day One.
Others in our group were assigned to get defenses in place and watches established. They’ve done the soul searching ahead of time to be sure they can really pull the trigger when the time comes. And it will.
If we see the world falling apart, those prepared preppers not belonging to any sort of a formal group will want to contact those family members, friends, and neighbors they’ve long suspected were preppers too. This is best if done ahead of time in a covert manner. If those we contact aren’t preppers, we don’t want them to think that we are and that they can rely on us to feed and water them. One way to do this would be to ask if they’ve ever read any novels like Alas Babylon, One Second After, or Patriots or if they know what mylar bags are.
Plan a conversation ahead of time where the topic of prepping would come up and ask the other person, “What do you think about those preppers?” Even if we wait to feel them out when things are starting to look imminent, perhaps saying, “I guess all those crazy preppers were right after all, it looks like we’re screwed,” then gauging their reaction can help. And then, the difficult/nearly impossible task of deciding how to form a group in one location for defense? This is one of the prepping objectives I’ve thought about the most. And I have started a written plan on what I’d say to potential group members to convince them that we’re going to be in deep feces if we don’t somehow band together.
Inadequately prepared preppers – Not having completed their preps, and not having a written plan, will cause their emergency phase to last longer and be more stressful than it need be. One of the most egregious mistakes preppers will make is never having actually tested their preps to see what worked and what didn’t.
While the prepared preppers are transitioning from emergency mode to survival mode, inadequately prepared preppers will still be taking care of essentials and trying to figure out how to accomplish such basics as getting water. The inadequately prepared preppers won’t have moved into survival mode quickly enough before they need to start defending the homestead from the totally unprepared. This will increase their stress level ten-fold, cost time, waste resources, and possibly leave them at the mercy of the unprepared more quickly.
HESITATION
In either type of collapse, slow motion or instantaneous, many preppers will be hesitant to say, “This is it!” This will include some of both kinds of preppers, the inadequately prepared and even some prepared preppers. They’ll delay getting it into gear as quickly as they should. They’re afraid of looking like a nutjob to family and friends unless things are absolutely certain. Critical days will be lost before they finally accept that it is “go” time. They’ll be in highly-stressful emergency mode for longer than they would have had they not hesitated.
We should recognize what stresses us out personally and make plans to minimize it when we’re in the emergency phase. It’s another reason why I like written plans, there’s no thinking to do, just reading a list and acting on prioritized items.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 3.)
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