The latest round of California earthquakes, topping at a couple 5.0s, had me reviewing my preparations for the Big One. MREs were about to expire so I upgraded to freeze-dried food and more water storage. On that note, this post, and a big hat-tip to
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/99-relatable-things-that-only-preppers-will-understand/
99 Relatable Things That Only Preppers Will Understand
1. Pantries are so mainstream.you have food stashed in strange places in every room of the house.
Storage space is so bourgeois. You use your food stashes as furniture.
2. You have enough toilet paper to get through a year of uncomfortable digestive upsets.occurring with 6 people simultaneously
3. Speaking of which, you possess at least 3 different ways to use the bathroom, only one of which is an actual bathroom.
4. Your kids know what OPSEC means.at the age of 4.
Your kids say ‘no money’ to panhandlers.
5. You have topographical maps of your area.plural.
You have multiple paths to your favorite destinations, including paths through restricted property and/or local storm drains.
6. When you’re forced to interact with “the others” you feel like you are awkwardly censoring your true opinions
7. You think nothing of treating an injury or illness yourself because “what if there was no doctor?.
You treat your own injuries because the ER is where illegals go to die.
8. Paintball and laser tag are no longer just a fun way to spend an afternoon “they are tactical training.
Your tactical training is provided by the local school’s “active shooter” drills.
9. You’ve purchased duct tape in bulk.
10. With every major purchase, you contemplate going for the off-grid version.
11. You have more manual tools than power tools.
Whichever, so long as they fit in the silverware drawer.
12. You’ve washed entire loads of laundry by hand for either necessity or practice. (And not just your dainties.we’re talking about jeans and stuff!)
13. Your kids are not afraid of guns.or fingers pointed like guns.or pastries in the shape of guns.or drawings of guns.
14. When house-hunting you look for multiple heat and water sources.
You avoid first-floor rentals.
15. You store food in buckets.lots of buckets.like, maybe even a whole room full of buckets.
Of the four food groups–canned, frozen, instant and takeout–your preference is “canned”.
16. You garden with a determination and time commitment normally reserved for endurance athletes training for an Ironman triathlon.
You have tried to garden.
17. If you don’t have a water source on your property, you have put in miles of footwork searching for one nearby, and have mapped multiple discreet routes to and from the source, and figured out how to haul the water back to your house on each route.
You already use water purification in daily life.
18. Your first instinct when hearing about some event on the mainstream news is skepticism. (False flag event, anyone?)
Your first instinct is “should I reroute my commute?”
19. You read articles about multiple ways to use white vinegar and nod your head throughout.
20. You believe that FEMA camps are real and that you are most likely on “The List..
You are affiliated with FEMA because they feed their own people first.
21. Instead of CNN, you have alternative news sites bookmarked in your favorites on your computer.
At least once, you have reported on a major news event by looking out your window.
22. You have enough coffee/tea/favorite-caffeinated-item-of-choice to last you through 3 apocalypses.
Five apocalypses.
23. You could outfit a small-town pharmacy with all of the over-the-counter medications you have stashed away.
The pharmacy will be fine. It’s already built like a bank vault to keep the vibrants away.
24. You have an instinctive mistrust of anyone working for the government.
25. You could sink a ship with the weight of your stored ammo. In fact, you put it in the basement when you became concerned about your floorboards.
You have only enough ammo for one battle because the scavenging should be more than enough to replace your losses.
26. Looking for a fun weekend outing with the kids? Forget amusement parks . the shooting range is where it’s at.
So you HAVEN’T been to Disneyland lately.
27. When the power goes out, you calmly light the candles and proceed with whatever you had been dong previously.
When the power goes out, your automatic battery backups are good for at least 12 hours.
28. A longer-term power outage is called “practice.”
29. If a like-minded person comes over to your house, they.ll realize you are “one of them” by seeing your reading material. Other folks won’t even notice. The FBI might call your copy of The Prepper’s Blueprint and your A. American fiction “subversive literature..
You prefer to not host at your home so nobody knows how prepped you are.
30. Your children carry a modified bug-out kit in their school backpacks.
Your children have a locker to check their weapons into upon arrival.
31. You can and dehydrate food with the single-minded fervor of an Amish grandmother facing a 7-year drought.
32. Calling 911 is not part of your home security plan.
911 calls you because you’re a volunteer firefighter.
33. You spend your days off digging an underground bunker in your backyard.
You have already picked a good location to hide a body.
34. You have more than a thousand cheapo lighters that you purchased in bulk, stashed away in the back of your linen closet.and you don’t even smoke.
That would encourage arson. Coffee is the short-term barter and in a city, there’s no need for long-term barter.
35. You eat a lot of survival food now, so there is no “system shock” when you are forced to eat only the items you have stocked (or that you GROW . hint hint).
36. You stock alcohol in mass quantities so you can comfortably numb after the SHTF.
37. You stock alcohol in mass quantities . and you don’t even drink. (Barter, baby!)
38. You know what? Forget stocking alcohol. You have your own still . You.ll make alcohol.
39. You have enough salt to create another Dead Sea.
40. You don’t move . you strategically relocate.
You don’t move – the freeway is now clogged with idiots.
41. You purchased 50 of these little EDC multitaskers already for stocking stuffers for your friends/family/workmates/neighbor/random stranger.
42. Speaking of Christmas, you gave Conflicted to everyone last year.
43. When your friends ask about your favorite authors, instead of Hemmingway, Tolkien, or Kerouac, you get a blank stare when you tell them it’s John “Lofty” Wiseman .
44. You know exactly how many Mountain House buckets it takes to make a base for a single bed.
45. You don’t stock up on milk. You get an actual cow.
46. Your family doesn’t dare take something from the food stockpile without marking it off the list.
47. Your kids know how to don a gas mask in 30 seconds.
Your kids know how to hide a knife during a pat-down… and they’ve done it to you at least once when you grounded them.
48. Everyone in your survival group carries the same firearm so that ammo is standardized.
Whatever. Guns are disposable.
49. You have non-electric versions of appliances like wheat grinders , washing machines , and coffee makers.
50. You yell at the TV every time a commercial for Doomsday Preppers comes on. Oh. Wait. You don’t have a TV. But if you did, you.d yell, because you know how positively ridiculous and unrealistic that show is.
“Dog the Bounty Hunter” was a bad one, too.
51. Your family is no longer surprised when you announce, .Hey, we’re going to learn how to make (insert anything here)!.
Your family is no longer surprised when you announce, “We’re getting off the streets.”
52. You have more how-to books stored on hard-drives than most public libraries have on the bookshelves.
53. Your children have a plan in case they need to bug out from school.
54. Alternatively, you homeschool and bugging out is part of the curriculum.
Homeschool or die.
55. You have more than three ways to cook dinner if the power goes out: a woodstove, a barbecue, a sun oven , a fire-pit, and/or a volcano stove.
56. First Blood and Red Dawn are basic training films for your family.
57. You have long since accepted the idea that if you’re not on someone’s list, you’re probably not doing it right.
You keep your own list of neighborhood “deplorables”.
58. Your 7-year-old knows Morse code.
59. You’re secretly disappointed when the electricity comes back on after only a few minutes.
You didn’t notice it stopped.
60. You know more ways to make a homemade knife than the entire population of your local prison combined.
You find that unlikely, knowing the population of your local prison.
61. You don’t just rotate food, you rotate ammo.
62. You know the distance from your door to your front gate is precisely 207 yards.
63. Moving to a new house is no longer .moving., but “strategic relocation ..
64. You have mapped out at least 3 different routes by car and 2 different routes on foot to get to your bug-out location.
Your car IS your bug-out destination.
65. You know the difference between “Tyvek ” and “Tychem ” suits, and in which instance they should be used.
Along with preventing disease, good gloves prevent fingerprints.
66. Ditto the finer points of N-95 vs. N-100 masks.
You use those masks at work.
67. You watch The Walking Dead in order to critique their survival tactics. (And you were secretly delighted to see Beth building a fire in a Dakota pit.)
You think zombies are metaphors for rioters.
68. Speaking of fire, you can start one in at least 3 different ways, and you always carry a lighter, a fresnel lens , and a magnesium firestarter.
You stockpile cardboard for warmth.
69. You have two (or more) of everything important, well, because “one is none..
70. You have a decoy food supply.
71. Your kids think it’s a fun game to see who can find the most potential weapons in a room.
72. Even your dog has a bug out bag . which she carries herself.
Your dog carries her own doggie bags, which are not for food.
73. You have elected NOT to purchase greater armament because you plan on upgrading with your future assailant’s weaponry.
74. Your EDC includes a knife, firearm w/extra mag, flashlight, mylar blanket, Chapstick, and an ounce of silver . and that’s just for when you’re walking the dog.
75. The trunk of your car has enough supplies to carry the family through an entire week during a major blizzard.
76. One criterion for your new winter coat is that it fits over your body armor.
77. Your neighbors separate their compost for you into a) chicken food b) garden food and c) other
You take savage joy in not recycling.
78. You scour travel size aisles because they fit better in bug-out bags and they make great barter items.
79. You check out the garden center and pest control section for potential weapons.
80. Your subscribed channels for YouTube and bookmarks now contain more prepper and alternative media sites than cute animal sites.
81. Christmas and birthday gifts have a prepper theme.
82. You actually know what the letters “EMP” stand for.
You know there will never be an EMP attack because tyrants need the electronic infrastructure more than their victims do.
83. Every time there is a small household “disaster” like a power outage or local water “boil order” you just grab your emergency supplies and remind dubious family members. .See, told you it pays to be prepared..
Every time there is a small household “disaster” you instantly know which specific politician is directly responsible.
84. Your freeze-dried food has a longer expiration date than you do.
85. You know how to make bows out of skis and arrows out of garden bamboo.
On at least one occasion, you have gone camping in your bedroom.
86. You have (or are seriously considering, buying) an old armored personnel carrier to turn into your RV.
You already live in an RV because rent prices are out of control.
87. You know that Falling Skies has better idea for post-apocalyptic survival than The Walking Dead or Z Nation but you still watch them all just in case.
It’s eerie how relevant prison reality shows are to your daily life.
88. Your friend asks “Do you have enough bullets?. then you both laugh and laugh because you know you can never have enough.
You keep extra survival food for your landlord just because he knows you’re a prepper.
89. You changed your home page from MSN (or any other propaganda media) to Drudge Report or SHTFplan.
You have bookmarks to primary-info sites on earthquakes (West coast), tornadoes (Midwest) or hurricanes (East Coast).
90. You have no problem knocking on strangers. doors to ask for fruit tree cuttings.
You have no problem knocking on strangers. doors to ask for protection money.
91. You have vacuum packed underwear in a plastic tub stashed somewhere in your house.
92. You just might have more medical supplies than the local ER.
93. The Co-op and Costco recognize you but pretend not to. They know better than to ask questions about your purchases.
94. If you’re a man you are no longer embarrassed to buy tampons and sanitary napkins because they make great bandages.
95. If you’re a woman you know you don’t need to buy tampons or sanitary napkins because so many other options exist.
96. You actually own a toilet seat that fits on a bucket.
You plan to dig a sanitation trench in your neighbor’s lawn because he has a lawn. He will thank you for it.
97. You have enough wood cut and stacked to form a barricade around your whole property.
You have metal plates along the front walls of your home in case of stray bullets.
98. Admit it. Every time the power goes out, you go see if your car starts so you can get the jump on hunkering down or buying out the store with case in the event that this one is actually an EMP.
99. You have considered filtering water with a coffee filter or a t-shirt.
You have considered using spray deodorants on fellow bus passengers, with a lighter handy in case they object too much.
Awesome list!