So You’re a Prepper?

So You’re a Prepper?

In short, yes. But to elaborate, so is every single person who has a spare tire for their car, or a first aid kit in their home, or even someone who has a snow shovel by their door. I know these seem like pretty basic things that most people have, but they are also a tool for being prepared. 

I know, in tv shows and current media, preppers are shown to be a little paranoid and a whole lot of extreme in their preparation; usually going on about the end of days and the apocalypse. I’m going to set that stereotype straight once and for all. The term prepper simply means someone who is prepared for a possible outcome. So having a first aid kit in your home, for the rare occasion you need a bandaid or some gauze, makes you a prepper. Having a spare tire in your car for the rare time you blow a tire, makes you a prepper. And even just having an ice scraper, for the cases of when your windows are too iced up to see, makes you a prepper.

Back to the topic at hand, I am a prepper. I know this will conjure some ideas for most of you, but I will do my best to dispel the myths and explain what that means for me. I was personally affected by the wildfires in Alberta a few years ago. As you all know, I am a Registered Nurse, and that means that if I am not prepared when I come to work, then I can be left with nothing when things go seriously wrong. One of my family members, who is also a nurse, was working on the day of the fire in Fort McMurray. She was evacuated with her patients, since she couldn’t leave them. By the time her relieving staff arrived, her apartment had burned to the ground, and her car was destroyed. All of her documents and possessions were lost to fire. The only things she had left were what she had taken to work that day. This scared me immensely. It made me realize that sometimes the only thing we can control is what we chose to bring with us on a particular day.

My preps (aka the stuff I have prepared) consists of first aid and medical supplies, water and ways to purify water, tools of my trade (eg stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, glucometer, oxygen saturation monitor, etc…), food for my household, and some apothecary supplies. And before you ask, yes I do have enough food to last a year, but no I do not have enough for five years. As I said before, I know I am a lot more prepared than most of the general population, but I am here to tell you that I started out just like all of you. When I started, I only had a basic first aid kit and one week worth of food in my pantry. All it takes is to change the mindset, to start thinking that you should put something away for a later time. 

I highly recommend starting with any prescription medication you need. So for me, I take two medications daily. I realized that if anything happened, including something as simple as a snowstorm, than I would be unable to get my medications if I were to run out. I started by checking my insurance coverage and my prescription refills. So my prescription is set to refill every three months, and my insurance will cover me getting my refill within a week of when it is due. This means that I can get an additional week of medication by refilling early. I started to do this, making sure that I was refilling it as soon as my coverage would allow, and I now (2 years later) have enough to make it through an extra month if anything goes wrong. It’s as simple as that to start getting prepared.

Another thing to talk about is the main tenants of prepping. It’s important to know the rule of threes, and the most important things to have prepared.  The rule of threes goes like this; a human can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. This helps us to determine the most important things to have prepared. First thing is to make sure that you have adequate air intake and blood flow to make sure  oxygen gets to the brain. This means that you need to make sure that you are breathing, clear any obstructions (ie choking), and stop any perfuse bleeding.  This means to provide first aid measures to an injured person and to ensure that their ABC’s are good (airway, breathing and circulation). There’s no point in erecting a shelter if the person is dead from not breathing first.

The next thing to have prepared is shelter. This could be as simple as getting inside a house or car, or by pitching a tent. The important thing here is to make sure you have the ability to find or build somewhere out of the elements, be that heat or cold or wet. This goes hand in hand with the ability to make fire. If you are somewhere without heat and it’s cold and windy, a fire is the only chance of keeping yourself warm and alive there is. So having things like a lighter and a small axe in your vehicle or on your hiking kit is all it takes to have this step prepared. Now this is the most basic you can get. There are definitely more advanced things you can have at your disposal, such as a tent, space heater, etc…, but the basics are all you need to start out with.

Once you have air and shelter, you need to start thinking about water. If you are preparing at home, this could be as easy as having a jug of water in your fridge, or a bunch of pop bottles of water in your freezer. Things get a little more complicated if you aren’t on town water, or are thinking about a much longer timeframe. This is when things like water filters, and boiling water, becomes huge. Once again, fire is going to be key. As long as you have a metal container and a heat source, as well as a source of water, you’re good to go. Again, there are definitely more advanced options out there, from fancy water filters, to chemical agents to add to your water to purify it.

And finally, once you have the rest of these taken care of, do you worry about food and medications. This is where that stock of prescription medication comes in, as well as that pantry of food. This is probably the step most people think of, but it’s the least important of them all. You can live a long time with water alone if you had to. I mean you would hate your life, but it is survivable. The easiest option here is to pick up a bag of rice and a bag of beans on your next shopping trip. Upside is that it will store easily and last a long time. This is also where picking up a book on foraging for edible food and medicinal herbs can be helpful. This is also the place where we need to think about possible alternatives for medical treatment of our chronic conditions, and routine bugs (ie common cold, flu, etc…).

That’s enough of the doom and gloom for now. Let’s leave this off on a positive note. While we are currently facing some economic hardship thanks to the coronavirus, we are in a good situation from the perspective of preparation. Prepping is becoming the mainstream among most of the adult generations, barring a few millenials, giving increase freedom from scrutiny when getting prepared, and leading to an increase in availability of supplies at a fairly reasonable price. I know this is a lot of information, and that I only just met you all, but I hope this helps to inspire you to start getting prepared and thinking about the what if’s of life. I promise the next one won’t be so rambling. Until next time, Prepping Medically.

As always, feel free to leave and comment or question below. Also feel free to contact me using the link below.

2 comments

I think today’s practice of not preparing is a new phenomena. I can’t comprehend why anyone would have less than a week’s worth of food in their house, and that’s just for certain things that have a short life span like milk. A child of the 70s, my parents were not preppers in the modern-day definition, but we had plenty of food in the house to do us if we couldn’t make it to the grocery store for weeks.

Each summer, when the berries came into season, we picked buckets full and Mom preserved them as jam and stored them in the cool, unfinished basement. She grew or bought cucumbers and made dozens of bottles of pickles and chow. By December, our freezer was full. Sometimes there was deer meat from hunting, and there was always extra meat Mom bought when it was on sale or marked down. We snared rabbits and fished, and the excess always went into the freezer for when we needed it.

I don’t think my parents were the exception. Everyone stored food, particularly if they lived outside the city. I wouldn’t call my grandparents, who were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s, preppers, but they had food to last months. Stock-piling food, water (actually having a water source) and wood (for heat) was a way of life. They took care of themselves. I’d call them self-sufficient.

Unfortunately, society in general has put their fate in the grocery store and, in an emergency, the government. These are two things that can never truly be counted on, particularly for the long-term.

You make several good points in your post, but I’d like to add one thing: only stock what you like regardless of what popular preppers say. If you don’t like rice, don’t stock it. It’s a waste of space, money and resources. I hate rice, and I don’t care how well it keeps, I will never eat it unless I’ve been starving for weeks and there’s nothing left to eat, not even grass.

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