Musings Upon a Missed SHTFriday

I had a truly awful headache on Friday that culminated in me crawling into bed for 6 hours until the pain went away. Naturally, this left me unable to write my scheduled Blue Collar Prepping article.

Fortunately, I was prepared for such an emergency, and called up a guest post. Titled "A Prepping Guide for Beginners," it lists 4 easy things you can start doing right now to get prepared for emergencies and disasters, and I encourage everyone to go read it.

Entry is always the hardest part of a hobby-lifestyle, and a lot of folks are overwhelmed at the prospect. With prepping, the normal desire to get it right is compounded with the fear that getting it wrong could result in disaster, injury or death.  This is one reason why I rail against shows like "Doomsday Preppers"; it presents extreme outliers as if they were the gold standard and anything short of that is failure, and that's simply not true.

If you have a camping backpack that has a tent, a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, some food, and the ability to start a fire, you have preps and you are immediately much better off than anyone without them. That backpack is now your core; build around it. Add to it, bit by bit, as much as you can afford. I've been prepping since 2009 on a budget of around $30/month (not counting Christmas and birthday presents) and I have quite a respectable bit of gear. I'm certain I could survive a tornado, a hurricane, or a forest fire, and could exist in relative comfort until help arrived or power returned.

I'm still not sexy enough for Doomsday Preppers to notice me. And that's fine, because that program is sensationalist crap. It promotes bad practices (breaking Operational Security by appearing on a nationwide TV program, for starters) the way women's magazines promote unhealthy self-image.

In conclusion, I heartily recommend new preppers check out David Blackard's Wednesday articles. David is a fellow with a limited budget who is essentially re-building his supplies from the ground up. While his articles may not be as entertaining as the others, they are packed with good information on how to be a stingy prepper.

I'm going to close with David's signature farewell" Remember, Some is always better than None!