I see people on Reddit (r/prepping) who, when asked what they are prepping for, talk about prepping “for Tuesday.” What I believe they mean is that they are not preparing for a specific event; they are preparing so that they can survive Tuesday, whatever it may bring. Tuesday is, of course, a stand-in for any day of the week and shows how a disaster can happen at any time.
That’s all well and good, but I don’t get the impression that they are preparing to survive a month of Tuesdays. Many of them appear to believe things will get better, or they will be rescued or resupplied in a manner of days. With local or regional weather events, that is often is the case. Preparing to survive three days or a week is better than not preparing at all, but I strongly encourage everyone to prepare to survive as long a period as they can.
I feel sorry for those people who say “I don’t want to survive if it’s going to be that bad.” By the time your survival instinct kicks in, it will be too late.
The Worst-Case Scenario
I’m not preparing for Tuesday. I’m preparing for the worst-case scenario. To me, this is a situation in which the world as we know it grinds to a halt and nothing functions. No electricity. No Internet. The car and trucks stop running, so we get no resupply. Banks close. Satellites are out and there is no GPS. Fuel stops flowing. Communications are down. There is no one to rescue us.
Think of it as COVID in 2020, but 100 times worse.
In my worst-case scenario, the first deaths start within the first days or a week and, just like the government estimates would happen in a massive grid-down event, 50 percent are dead in six months and 90 percent in a year. Whether that kind of disaster is caused by an EMP, nuclear war, a comet strike, a string of volcanic eruptions, or something we can’t even imagine or predict doesn’t matter. If I survive the event, my goal is to be among the 10 percent that are still alive a year later.
I expect things will stabilize at some point, and then there will be a slow recovery, first locally in a few areas, then regionally, and finally nationally. I want to be around to see it and to contribute to the recovery.
Is this scenario likely? Maybe not, but I’m preparing for it in any case. If I only need to survive Tuesday, or a week of Tuesdays, that should be a piece of cake. When we were told after Helene that we needed to evacuate because our power would be out for 90 days, we stayed because we knew we were prepared. I want you to have the same confidence and to kow you can live for three months without outside resources.
The Best Item to Stockpile
In any scenario, I consider food to be the most useful prep, because everyone will need it and it will be useful in a wide range of disasters.
One benefit of having lots of stored food is you can use it at any time. Extra food will come in handy even if it isn’t the end of the world as we know it. Your prepper pantry could be useful if there is inflation, supply chain issues, a trucker/teamster strike, martial law, fuel shortages, job or income loss, bank closures, pandemic, internet disruption, or financial hacking. You will always need food, so store plenty of it. In fact, store enough to feed others.
In every massive die-off in the 20th century, a lack of food killed more people that bullets and bombs. I would not wish starvation on my worst enemy.
Yes, I have guns, but there are plenty of survival scenarios where I won’t need one. I cannot foresee a disaster in which I won’t want to eat—unless I’m dead, of course. In that case, it doesn’t matter whether I prepared for Tuesday or for a decade.
I get that water is also critical. You can live longer without food than you can without water, but it is much easier to find “wild” water and make it drinkable than it is to find “wild” food, at least is many parts of the country.
And then there is shelter, but unless you are homeless or caught miles from home when disaster strikes, I expect you have shelter. It may not be ideal for long-term survival, but hopefully it’s better than a tent in the woods.
Storing Food
I have stored food, but I want more. My plan had been to refresh my supply of food in #10 cans and 5-gallon pails this year and to purge some of the older food, especially the powdered milk and other products that don’t have the longest shelf life. I would open a bucket of wheat or a can of ABS Soup Mix from years ago to see if it was still OK. If so, eat it or feed it to the chickens. If not, replace it and check more cans.
That plan was put on hold because of hurricane remediation costs and the expense of buying a Polaris Ranger. Maybe next year. Or, more likely, maybe a few cans and buckets at a time over a period of several years. For now, we just keep rotating our out canned food. (For breakfast Thursday, we had a can of corned beef hash that expired in 2023. I had chili from an seven-year-old MRE that night for dinner.)
Before we moved, I had food in our basement storage room, food at a friend’s farm and smaller amounts in a storage unit and at our retreat. Now all my food is in one location, which is a potential weakness. I’m looking at changing that.
Food Caches
When I started my cache system, it was primarily to stockpile ammunition where we might need it if we were in a fighting withdrawal. My thought was that if I am forced to leave the house with my gun and only a couple of magazines (with or without my Homestead Defense Bag), it would be good to have ammo cans stashed in strategic locations where I could pick up more loaded magazines and ammo.
When I put together these caches, I added snack food to keep me operating. I also added small bottles of gun oil or tubes of grease to help keep my gun running. Bore snakes are cheap and don’t take up much room, so they are in some caches. I also added some first aid items.
My second round of caches focused on supporting a small party—such as my wife and myself—for several days. This includes a rudimentary sleep system, more substantial foods than snacks, and a way to cook meals. We can camp at the cache site, or we can grab key parts of it and take them with us.
My next cache project will focus on food. The purpose will not be to eat in the field, but to hide it from others, including government personnel bent on confiscation. I’m thinking of burying 100,000 to 200,000 calories worth of food, just in case. I expect my biggest problem will be digging the hole. Or, more likely, multiple holes. The soil is so rocky, I may have to resort to a cache where I scrape away the dirt, place items in ammo cans of various sizes in the shallow area, and pile dirt and rocks on them. It may be obvious for a few months, but not after a year.
What the Future Holds
None of us knows what the future holds. The stock market could keep going up, the Middle East could see a lasting peace, Russia and Ukraine could reach a peace deal, Europe could move away from civil war, China’s economic problems and internal issues could prevent them from invading Taiwan, we could see fewer storms and other natural disaster, and AI could be a boon to humanity.
Or not.
The “not” is why I prep. We don’t know what the future holds, but we can be pretty sure it isn’t all going to be sunshine and rainbows. We can also expect whatever disaster hits will last longer than Tuesday. You may or may not need your guns and ammo, tools and skills, first aid and medical supplies, water filters and shelter, but you damn well will need food. Stockpile it while you still can!
