by K.F., Survival Blog:
I’ve heard it said that you can make a small fortune in horse breeding, if you start with a large fortune. Prepping is a lot like that, too. You can be ready for almost anything if you throw enough money at the problem set that is prepping.
But what do you do if you don’t have much money? What can you do if you live on a quarter acre lot, and you have no chance of ever upgrading? About fifteen years ago, I met somebody like that who has given me some answers to these questions.
C.L. was the first prepper I ever met. She is a CERT team instructor, which is how we met. We have a shared faith in Jesus, and a shared interest in amateur radio, which led to a discussion of prepping. She was the first person I met who used the terms “prepping” and “bugging out”. Given my upbringing by frugal immigrant parents who grew up during the Great Depression, much of what she talked about resonated with me, and caught my interest.
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We didn’t agree one hundred percent, though there was plenty of common ground. When she talked about bugging out, I was struggling to find a diplomatic way to say “you’re out of your mind”. In the end, I didn’t say anything, but later, I invited her to go camping for two days for an amateur radio activity. While she did a great job on the radio stuff, it was pretty obvious that camping was difficult for her, and not something she enjoyed. In a subsequent discussion, she recognized that bugging out probably isn’t the best idea if she finds camping difficult and stressful.
C.L. is a very fast learner. Once she realized that bugging out should be the last resort for her instead of the first resort, she threw herself into prepping for staying in place. I will share some of what she has learned and applied.
A CERT course (Community Emergency Response Team) is a great place to start. It can be started online by using the following link: https://emilms.fema.gov/IS-0317a/curriculum/1.html (copy and paste that link into your browser). It’s a free class, developed by FEMA, on how people in a community can respond to a disaster. (To those of you who think anything connected to FEMA is anathema, I have two things to say: First, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and second, if you’re okay with a Baofeng radio, which is manufactured in a hostile country using slave labor, then you should have no problem with FEMA.) The class teaches very practical stuff, including basic fire suppression and hazmat, triage and first aid in a disaster, basic urban search and rescue, communication in a disaster, and psychology of disasters. The class emphasizes working as a team. There is a version of the class that is tailored to teenagers, too.
C.L. teaches CERT courses to anyone who will take them. She meets a lot of people in the course of these classes, and she’s become good at figuring out which ones might be good candidates to join a prepping group that she started more than ten years ago.
Prepping as a group is a fantastic idea, because nobody can have everything or know everything needed. If you think of each person in the group bringing in one essential skill and one essential piece of equipment, the value of a group starts to be apparent. What C.L. has found is that most people bring in more than one essential skill and piece of equipment, which means that the group doesn’t have to be as large.
Trust is an important component in a prepping group. If you can’t trust or work with someone in good times, things won’t improve in tough times. A shared faith helps, but it’s not a silver bullet. As a beloved pastor once told me, “Wherever two or more of you are gathered together, there’s the potential for a really good fight.”
I asked C.L. how she finds people who fit in the prepping group, apart from CERT classes. Her response was like I’d asked her how to breathe; she never thought about describing to someone else how to do something that’s more or less automatic for her. When I pressed her, she mentioned talking to people at church, going door to door, and Facebook posts. She observed that the most effective way to find people is face-to-face. In her small town, almost everyone knows her, and those people will hear her out because they’ve seen her help their neighbors with everything from their kids’ homework to a ride to a medical appointment.
The prepping group is a loose group, and it isn’t a commune. The members don’t live together, as is described in some books about prepping. They have their own homes and land, and their own assets. They also have a well-developed communications network that is independent of infrastructure (which, to safeguard their privacy and security, I will not describe). The group is like a cooperative.
What kind of skills does the prepping group look for? The list is long, but she started with what CERT teaches, and looks for people who can take it to the next level. For example, she found a military veteran who was a medic. That’s a twofer, because he brings both medical knowledge and tactical skill. She looks for people knowledgeable about farming and ranching. These people have land and other assets, but stand to benefit by having people can help with labor when SHTF. She looks for career homemakers, who know how to do things like preserve food and make clothing and other needed articles. Any prepper group can set its own priorities on skills and knowledge, and those priorities may change over time.
The prepper group that C.L. started years ago has grown and matured. It includes some people holding local public offices, who, in their official capacities, see the group as an asset that can be used in different types of disaster. Where it’s possible and where there’s a shared goal of public safety, working with local government officials can be a very good thing, but be cautious.
