What I want to talk about today is something that I feel gets neglected in a lot of people’s prepping and that is mental preparedness. In my opinion, you can have months to years of food and supplies, a secure home or bugout location, enough weapons and ammunition to hold off an army, and redundant systems ad infinitum, but if you are not truly mentally prepared for when the SHTF or TEOTWAWKI, your prepping may be all for naught.
I think a lot of people that have been prepping for awhile probably are pretty prepared mentally. They have usually taken the time to sit down and think through the scenarios and really think about the implications of various situations and how they might respond. There are also a lot of people who have jumped on the prepping bandwagon recently because it is a “hot” subject right now, thanks to television shows such as Doomsday Preppers. Some of those folks have gone out and spent a lot of money to get the gear, stock their larder, and are declaring themselves to be prepared, without really thinking about what an SHTF situation would really mean for them and for their families. Their newly acquired “stuff” sits in the basement, gathering dust, and they blithely go on about their lives, thinking that their future is secure. I believe a lot of these people truly have no idea what they are in for if the balloon goes up so to speak. A lot of these folks have never been through a disaster more serious than the fact that a thunderstorm knocked their power out for an hour or two. They have been through inconvenience, not true crisis. I’m not faulting these people, I am just stating what I believe to be a fact. I am also not suggesting at all that anyone should be obsessed with prepping and doomsday. I don’t think that is necessarily healthy or good either. I think everyone needs to find balance in their lives. That healthy balance is going to be different for everyone, so there is no “set in stone” right answer.
One very good way to check your mental preparedness for the feces striking the fan blades is to put yourself into a simulated, but realistic longer-term situation where you will have to sustain yourself. By longer-term I am meaning more than a few hours. Go from inconvenience to crisis. As a means of achieving this goal, I encourage you to put together a bugout bag. There are plenty of videos, checklists, and resources out there that will guide you in the construction and assembly of such a bag. In a future video, I will give a detailed tour of my bag. My bag actually is a work in progress and probably always will be as I find things I like, things I don’t like, things that work for me, and things that don’t work for me. I also have 3 separate (but highly inter-related) load-outs for the bag that I am working on. A Get Home Bag (GHB) load-out, which would be the stuff I would need to make the journey from my workplace to home on foot. It is the lightest and easiest configuration. The next loadout is the Bugout Bag (BOB) loadout. It has stuff in it that I would need if conditions warranted that my family and I needed to leave our residence, but it appeared that we would be able to return at some point. It is a heavier and more complex configuration. The final loadout is the I’m Never Coming Home Bag (INCH) loadout. It is for the most extreme situation, where conditions are such that my family and I need to vacate the residence and chances are good that we will not be able to return. This is a much heavier and more complex loadout that would likely require multiple bags and a wagon or cart. I have the GHB loadout pretty well set, the BOB loadout is getting there, and the INCH loadout is largely still in the theoretical and brainstorming stage.
I have kind of gone off on a tangent with a discussion on bag loadouts. I am going to try to get back on topic now, but I do promise a more detailed post and video or videos about my bag coming up very soon. Anyway, once you have your BOB put together, I recommend testing it out by going off the grid for a minimum of 24 hours and sustaining yourself with just what you have in your bag. This can be as simple as turning off all lights in the house, declaring all electronics off limits, declaring all utilities off limits (with the exception probably of use of the toilet), declaring the refrigerator off limits. In short, declaring all the normal comforts of everyday life off limits. If you want to get even more daring, find a local campground that has a primitive camping area and go camp there for a day or so using only what is in your bag. Doing this will serve two purposes. One, it will let you see holes in your BOB that you might not have foreseen in your prepping. There is always something that will arise that you didn’t consider. Trust me. The second purpose is, it will let you see, in a somewhat controlled situation, how you mentally handle the adversity that comes with a longer-term crisis. You will learn a lot about yourself and it will help you to build the mental tenacity to handle the curveballs life may throw at you.
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