10 Basics for Crisis Survival - for 2012 and Beyond
A place to Start
Penny and I wanted to present to you, our thoughts on the 10 basic areas of prepping for a crisis. As we continue to prep our personal plan becomes more and more refined. If you are new to prepping I am sure you are wondering where to start. These 10 suggestions are where we began. We are now at a point where most of our basics are covered and long term solutions are beginning to be put in place.
Rest assured that there is always time and resources available to start your prepping for a crisis. Don' let yourself be overwhelmed. Pick one of the ten areas and start with that. My suggestion for beginners is always the 72 hour kit. These can usually be assembled from items you have around the house already. If you have the finances available to purchase an already assembled kit, check out a company called OutInStyle.com. It really is up to you. Remember, your knowledge and desire to thrive in a crisis is the most important factor in moving your preps forward, not the amount of money you throw at it. Penny and I hope to give or lead you to that knowledge.
These are our ten basic areas of focus. Most all prepping can be subcategorized under these 10
Ten Basics
- 72 hour Kit
- Food and Water Storage
- Medical Supplies and Knowledge
- Get home Plan (or evacuation/bug-out plan)
- Unity of Community
- Barter Items
- Skills
- Tools
- Alternative Shelter
- Comfort Items (extra clothing etc.)
In our upcoming podcasts we will take on one of the 10 Basics and delve deeply into it, providing you with resources, links and tips on surviving and thriving in any future crisis.
If you have some thoughts and input that you think might be helpful to your fellow preppers, please leave a comment or send us an email, we would love to include these in future podcasts.
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Comments on 10 Basics for Crisis Survival - for 2012 and Beyond »
Thanks, Dennis and Penny, for your list; it's so important to have a place to start in dealing with the great unknown. And it's good to start with a few tangibles that anyone can understand. Readers need to understand that a couple of the items you have listed are extremely complex and will take considerable work. Those include what you call "united of community" and "skills/tools." Getting a community to work together, and collectively gather the vital skills for survival, is key. Finding the right people for such a group cannot be left to chance. This is critical for several reasons, not the least of which is that an individual cannot possibly develop all of the skills needed, but a community can come much closer to doing so.
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I agree with you that finding a network of like minded individuals is key to successfully thriving in a crisis. Many experiments have been tried with communal living and most have not been successful. These usually failed because they were based on one persons vision and depended on all the participants to buy into this vision. Resources and the workload were to be shared and that was the downfall. Inevitably some participants consumed too much or didn't produce as much as the others and this caused the community to fall apart (kind of like what we are seeing in this nation now). To me a successful community begins with individual ownership of land and resources. The skills and resources of the individual are then exchanged for skills and resources of the others (kind of like what the U.S. used to be like). Finding this community or like minded individuals is the challenge. A lot of small rural towns in the USA still have some semblance of this but are very tight and a new person in town needs to win their confidence and approval. Its a good start. Penny and I will go into depth about "The Unity of Community" in an upcoming podcast, so keep in touch and send us some of your ideas so that we can share them with the other listeners.
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Alvar the concept of Unity of Community is one that is very important to me. But not as complex or hard to do as one may think, at least my version of it. It does however, take thought and some networking skills and can be accomplished with as little as five to ten people who maintain their own homes and independently living. One of the most exciting things that we have noticed recently is many listeners from Brazil and other countries. My question is that as we publish our ideas that work in America I'd love to hear the possible challenges of those ideas by living in other countries. Good luck with your program and keep listening. Penny
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