I’ve been a hardcore prepper for a couple of decades. My wife? Not so much. She has been more than tolerant of my prepping, rarely complains about the money I spend, and is never obstructionist. She says nothing about the number of guns I own or the 5-gallon buckets piled up in our garage. More importantly, she willingly moved to our prepper property in the Appalachian mountains.
Lately, she’s begun showing tendencies of a more serious prepper. For example, I’ve caught her buying extra food at Walmart, something I usually do, and the last time she went to Costco she brought home a 25-pound bag of rice. Last week, she voluntarily ate two MRE entrees. (That’s a record for a woman who says she won’t eat Spam until TEOTWAWKI.) Then she told me she wants to buy a new holster.
The other day she asked if I thought the five cords of wood we had were enough for the winter. I explained it may not be, but I’m running out of storage space. My plan is to burn one and then replace it with new wood.
I Think it’s Rural Living
She’s never been against being prepared, she just never took it to the extreme I have. She always had a warm blanket and a few other supplies in her car. In my truck, on the other hand, I have all that, plus a small armory, a full tactical med kit, flashlight, spare clothes, food, and water.
My guess is that our remote location and the possibility of getting snowed in for days or weeks have helped push her towards my approach. When running out to the store is a 90-minute round trip, it’s nice to have an extra set of everything in our storeroom and garage. In fact, I knew I was winning her over when she went through my box of spare spices, declared it insufficient, and bought several large bottles of spices for it. Let’s just say we will not run out of oregano or cinnamon for some time.
She’s not blind, either. She lived through COVID-19 and 2020, and she sees what’s happening to our country. Because my wife does much of the grocery shopping, she sees prices rising and feels the pinch of inflation. And while she doesn’t want to dwell upon bad news, I think the idea of being prepared is growing on her to the extent that she wants to actively participate rather than being pulled along in my wake.
The More Preppers The Merrier
My wife is not alone in turning towards prepping. I’ve noticed more preppers than ever, including professionals like our dentist. It would not surprise me to learn that new preppers stocking up on canned food is a contributing factor to the empty store shelves we all see from time to time. In my opinion, the more people who are prepared, the better. More serious preppers equals less immediate pain when things fall apart.
The face of prepping is also changing. Preppers used to wield chainsaw and shotguns. Now they are just as likely to be wielding a pressure canner or a bread pan. The Mel Tappan solo survivalist is still around, but he has been superseded by the family that is prepared. The survivalist that escapes into the woods and lives off the land today is a rarity. Forty years ago, it was the stereotype. That just shows you how main stream prepping has become.
Nowhere is this change more obvious the YouTube where there are probably more videos on stocking your prepper pantry than any other prepping topic. I believe food storage is the foundation of your preparedness planning, but I am a little concerned that these newer prepper families think stocking food and paper products is all it takes. I hope they are not ignoring the uglier aspects of survival after the SHTF, including self-defense.
Keep getting prepper, folks. Start with food, but stop there.
