Inter­est­ing­ly, while work­ing in Mid­town Man­hat­tan for an Inter­net com­pa­ny in ear­ly 2009 I began to have the over­whelm­ing feel­ing that I was too con­nect­ed.  Too in touch with tech­nol­o­gy, and that I was miss­ing some­thing in my life.  It was­n’t spir­i­tu­al (more on this lat­er), it was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reli­gious, and I just could­n’t put my fin­ger on it.  Then one day it hit me.  Sim­plic­i­ty and pre­pared­ness.  My life, after a breakup with my ex-fiancée, per­son­al finances after plan­ning a wed­ding that did­n’t hap­pen, com­bined that with a down econ­o­my, a war we are not nec­es­sar­i­ly win­ning, a ris­ing cold war with anoth­er coun­try, and hav­ing to get out of bed every day and pre­tend there is noth­ing wrong with the world, and go to work and per­form.  Wow, what a mouth­ful.  But that was it.  Sim­plic­i­ty.  The sim­plic­i­ty of nature, and get­ting back to basics before tech­nol­o­gy ruled my life from the time I awoke in the morn­ing.

I was a bur­geon­ing neo­phyte of a prep­per.  Where to start?  Odd­ly enough, about the same time I began think­ing I need­ed to sim­pli­fy my life, I picked up a book by Neil Strauss called “EMERGENCY: This book could save your life.”  I won’t get into what the book was about now too deeply, but it out­lined Neil’s jour­ney into para­noia, sur­vival, the out­doors, and what to do if the “shit hit the fan,” and how he would sur­vive.  In many ways, this book would begin a thought process of sim­pli­fy­ing my life, while con­sid­er­ing ter­ror­ism, sur­vival, per­son­al secu­ri­ty, my health, when the SHTF, pre­pared­ness, and more.  I became a lit­tle more para­noid, I want­ed to know what else was going on in the world polit­i­cal­ly, and for oth­er rea­sons, I became more vig­i­lant about my own pro­tec­tion, the pro­tec­tion of my fam­i­ly, and what I would do in an emer­gency.  I had for­got­ten every­thing I knew about first aid, CPR, etc.  I real­ized quick­ly, I had not picked up a fish­ing pole in years, have not hunt­ed, and did­n’t know how to for­age for food as my grand­fa­ther before I did.  That moment of clar­i­fi­ca­tion made me feel, well, use­less.

I began research­ing sur­vival schools for class­es and work­shops.  I began mak­ing lists for my Bug-Out-Bag, buy­ing new camp­ing and sur­vival gear, start­ed to stock­pile ammu­ni­tion for my guns, as well as learn to make sur­vival foods, and began stor­ing food in the event of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter or anoth­er type of dis­as­ter.  In my truck, I built a sur­vival bag that has two days worth of food, water, and camp­ing gear at all times.  I have a bug-Out-Bag at home with 72 hours’ worth of food, and sup­plies if I have to hit the road.  I pur­chased a shoul­der hol­ster and tac­ti­cal hol­ster in the event I had to gear up and be pre­pared… I went lit­tle nuts.  But, It has been teach­ing me that you can nev­er be too pre­pared when it comes to your per­son­al safe­ty.  If there is a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter or anoth­er man-made dis­as­ter, and yes includ­ing nuclear, I am at least pre­pared with my potas­si­um iodide tablets. I am more wor­ried about a dirty bomb than a nuclear det­o­na­tion where I live cur­rent­ly.

You may be ask­ing your­self if I am crazy.  I am going to tell you that I am only look­ing to improve my self-reliance, which odd­ly is cen­ter­ing me, as it helps me achieve the goal of unplug­ging as well.

This blog is noth­ing but a jour­ney.  A jour­ney of what I am learn­ing and my chron­i­cle of what I have achieved and will con­tin­ue to learn.  I hope to share it with friends and fam­i­ly at some point so that they too can ben­e­fit from what I have learned, and maybe become more aware as well.

I will also be keep­ing a copy of this as a book­let in all of my gear so that I can ref­er­ence it at a lat­er date if I ever need to.