New American Truth

As I read various articles and blogs about survival preparation, planning, preparedness, etc. it occurs to me that each writer, including myself, holds a greater expertise in certain areas of preparedness and survival than in others. I know… “Duh!” right? What would I expect? Everyone has that which they have mastered to a greater extent and those skills that they still need to practice. It is human nature, I believe, to prefer to practice that which we are already good at and to neglect, to some extent, the things we aren’t as good at. Why? Because we naturally don’t like failure and when we practice the things we’re not as particularly skilled at, we don’t do them as well… leaving us feeling a greater sense of failure than when we efficiently and neatly accomplish another skill set we’re far better at. Read the full story

Everyone has a different idea of what a “tool kit” is and you can find a plethora of articles on “every day carry.”  My wonderment, as brought up by a conversation I had yesterday, is what preppers or survivalists carry each day that they consider essential for their survival.  The bigger question, for me, is what they think they should be carrying but don’t due to legal restrictions (weapons), convenience (bulkiness) or perception (how would people look at them). Read the full story

In my book, “Personal Disaster Planning Handbook,” I describe a layered and redundant system of preparation that includes both a backpack/bug out bag and a load bearing vest.  In the book I’m very clear that you have to make the choice whether you load your vest to support survival, defense (combat) or both.  Recently I had a friend of mine point out to me that combat is entirely about survival so if you load your vest to support defense/combat then, in his opinion, you ARE loading it for survival.  This gave me pause and forced me to consider a few things. Read the full story

The creativity level of people who are trying to sell something never ceases to amaze me.  Manufacturers, vendors, bloggers, etc… they all seem capable of coming up with a new spin on why you need something they’ve got.  I’m as guilty as the next guy: I try to sell my books and certainly this website makes a few dollars from advertising (enough to keep us up and running anyway).  For all that, I still believe that basic preparedness and survival starts, first and foremost, with YOU and your knowledge.  I also firmly believe that survival and preparedness are two different things. Read the full story

Isn’t it a shame that we can’t get people as excited about preparedness as one author did about a man’s variations in his sexual interests?  I mean… yeah, I understand that almost anything to do with sex is more interesting that preparedness, planning and survival, but if you die for lack of preparedness you’re not going to be around to enjoy sex anyway, right?  That said, the whole “fifty shades” thing got me to thinking that there are probably that many different kind of preppers (if not more) and quite often we’re all lumped together in the same basket in spite of our differences. Read the full story

If you go onto any gun oriented, law enforcement oriented, concealed carry or other similar website you stand a good chance of finding articles about “every day carry” or EDC.  Essentially the discussion revolves around the guns and other items that people carry each day for self-defense or, for off-duty law enforcement officers, emergency enforcement actions.  What I’d like to talk about are the items you might deem necessary to carry every day but from a survival perspective. Read the full story

I had to wait a few days to calm down before writing this. It seems a friend of mine, who has never said anything directly to me about my prepper ways, decided to put up a couple of posts on facebook. The posts were not insulting per se, but were full of implied criticism of ANYONE who prepares in any way. To make things worse, to me, this person lives about as far from a nuclear power plant as I do and has even less chance of escaping the area should something go wrong. So rather than do anything proactive to be ready (you know… prepare?) this individual has decided it would be great sport to make fun of preppers. Read the full story

For some people, the idea of “free water” is no big deal. You might have a well or cistern on your property and don’t get a water bill. If you have a cistern, you essentially have one big “rain barrel” and this article may not be of much interest to you. If you have a well, it’s either a pump well or has an electric motor. If it has an electrc motor than you probably know well the challenges you face if the power goes out and you don’t have a back-up source of power. That prediction got me thinking about how we measure rainfal in inches and how much water it actually is. I had to do a little bit of research and some math but it wasn’t difficult. Any fifth grader could do it (I think). Here are the numbers. Bear with me as I justify the relatively low cost and simple expediency of having a rain barrel or three. Read the full story

It occurred to me before that self-reliance is often what sets apart those of us who don’t want the government in our lives from those who are dependent on the government to maintain their lives.  This morning I realized that those of us so many folks today call “preppers” are really just we who prefer to be self-reliant.  Think about it: prepping means getting ready for when government and/or commercially provided services aren’t available, whether it’s temporarily or for a longer period of time.  What we call “prepping” today was a matter of day-to-day survival 100+ years ago in rural areas. Read the full story