Tonight after clean­ing my guns, relax­ing a lit­tle bit, and hav­ing some din­ner, I got on one of the sur­vival forums that I am a mem­ber of.  I was look­ing up gar­den­ing infor­ma­tion and found quite a few resources, down­loaded some docs, and came across this post, which was pub­lished in 2007 by a mem­ber there.  UPDATE:  I com­plete­ly lift­ed this from the forum, like­ly against forum pol­i­cy, but even read­ing it again today, it still is good com­mon pre­pared­ness sense.

I thought I would share as it is about tak­ing action on being pre­pared:

“Just a few obser­va­tions cou­pled with an opin­ion here. Pre­pared­ness is not dif­fi­cult, the hard­est part being to just start doing it if you haven’t start­ed yet. The clock is tick­ing. It is great to have grandiose plans to buy land “some­day”, to build wind­mills for pow­er “some­day”, to get the fan­ci­est gear “some­day”, or to buy cas­es of expen­sive freeze dried food “some­day”. You may well be caught with every­thing in the plan­ning stages.

The basic items are the core of any pre­pared­ness plan. Grab that huge sack of rice the next time you are in the gro­cery store. Don’t plan on it or think about it, just do it. Once you get it home and it is star­ing you in the face and under­foot all the time, you will even­tu­al­ly store it prop­er­ly. In the mean­time you have own­er­ship of it. If food deliv­er­ies are sud­den­ly shut down and you are still think­ing about it, you will have much com­pa­ny. Good inten­tions means you go hun­gry. If you can’t afford a years sup­ply of food now, don’t start sav­ing up for get­ting it “some­day”. Lay in as many canned goods as you can now. No, it ain’t freeze dried and won’t last for 30 years but you will have it now. Gro­cery stores are the first thing to be mobbed. Hap­pens all the time here when a bliz­zard is fore­cast. Same goes for water.

If you have a firearm, any firearm, get some extra ammu­ni­tion now. Maybe it is a poor excuse for a MBR or maybe it is a sin­gle shot 410 shot­gun, but it is what you have now. Ammo is expen­sive. Get what you can now. Think of the regret you may feel some­day that you did­n’t get that extra box of ammo because you was sav­ing up to get a case at a bet­ter price “some­day”. Plan­ning on a rifle “some­day”? If all you can get right now is a Mosin or an SKS, do it. A home invad­er is not going to mock your rifle because it is not a tricked out AR with all the bells and whis­tles, or taunt you because it only cost $150. He will not be fright­ened if you con­front him with a pic­ture of the MBR that you may have “some­day”.

If you can afford a gen­er­a­tor, get it now. For the life of me I can­not under­stand why every­one does not have one. Yeah, they take the “F” word (fuel). If your wind­mills, bat­tery banks, and solar pan­els are “in the works”, you will be join­ing the throngs at the local shel­ter dur­ing the next long term pow­er out­age. A gen­er­a­tor at the ready means you are unaf­fect­ed by the most com­mon event that should be pre­pared for. We have just expe­ri­enced long term pow­er out­age #4 since Christ­mas. I took a ride on the ATV to see if oth­ers had lost their pow­er. All dwellings I stopped at were aban­doned, they went to rel­a­tives and shel­ters as they always do. Rur­al area, go fig­ure! Can’t afford a big one? Get a small one. It will run your fur­nace blow­er and some light bulbs. Don’t have a 50 gazil­lion under­ground fuel stor­age tank but are plan­ning one “some­day”? Store a cou­ple of gas cans now. No, it is not per­fect but you have actu­al­ly done some­thing.

Do the best you can with what you have now. It’s fine to plan on the exot­ic stuff “some­day” but not at the expense of imme­di­ate prepa­ra­tions. When things go down it will most like­ly be with­out warn­ing. It can be dis­cour­ag­ing for the indi­vid­ual just start­ing out to read the threads cre­at­ed by those who have prac­ticed pre­pared­ness for years and have the best gear mon­ey can buy. I just fear for those who are con­stant­ly “on hold” and plan­ning with­out any sense of urgency. The small­est thing you do now puts you in a class far above most peo­ple. Most do noth­ing but hold every­one else account­able. Irre­spon­si­ble, to them­selves, their loved ones, and their com­mu­ni­ty. I think that it was the old Nike sneak­er com­mer­cial that always said “Just do it”. Any dis­agree­ments are, as always, wel­comed and are encour­aged. Thank you.”

I thought it was pret­ty well thought out, and thor­ough.  I also found a post on being pre­pared to spend only $5.00 per week if you are tight on cash.  I will post about that in the com­ing days.

UPDATE:  It’s all about exe­cu­tion.  Exe­cut­ing your plan to be pre­pared…  I have suc­ceed­ed and failed here.  Mean­ing, I have a pool, but no water stor­age (I don’t feel your pool should be your water stor­age, albeit, it dou­bles for water stor­age).   I have long-term food stored, but not the ide­al con­di­tions for long-term food stor­age, etc.  I guess the point is, don’t hes­i­tate.  Con­di­tions don’t have to be per­fect, just exe­cute.  This goes for build­ing skills whether they are cook­ing your long-term food stor­age, tak­ing a first aid class, tak­ing a combative(s) class, or learn­ing to hunt.  All of these skills can be and are crit­i­cal to pre­pared­ness…