AN ABBREVIATED REVIEW OF PREPPING FOR SILVER DOCTOR READERS, All good fellow readers: Doe was kind enough to allow me access to his site as a contributor and for a long overdue review ofa subject that comes up frequently on Silver Doctors. For the last few weeks now, I’ve dug down into my archives and library on the subject of prepping. This is an art and science which has been forgotten by us over the last 2-3 generations. What was commonplace to our agrarian ancestors is no longer part of our awareness. I make one assumption in this guide. As buyers and owners of, precious metals, we are a like-minded community. Buying PMs is actually one small but vital aspect of prepping that most do not talk about, The fact that you are interested in these goodies makes this material even more important. With the advent of supermarkets, internet buying, big box retailers and the ever present availability of consumer goods, prepping is usually not on our minds. The vital matter of keeping a stock of food, water, medicine, hardware supplies coupled with the ability to defend one’s home with firearms is actually frowned on or at least relegated to the crowd that wears tin foil hats, lives in yurts and lopes into the ‘vil to fill up on their stock of stone knives and bear claws. Actually, those are my relatives. Preppers come in all shapes and sizes and are categorically NOT throwbacks. They've simply recognized that we are three meals from revolution and supermarkets hold 2 days worth of food stocks. There are phrases that describe our thinking such as when “The S*t Hits the Fan” and “TEOTWAWEKL’, or The End of the World as We Know It. When faced with the choice of falling into the arms of FEMA, Federal Employees Mismanaging the Aftermath, or going it alone, I will always opt with the latter. Katrina scared me straight from the notion at the government is here to help me. Please! Without going into the disruption of the social compact, and a time when our country might fall into chaos, there are very good and specific reasons to have supplies on hand at your home or a storage unit if we encounter natural disaster. 201 was year uncommonly rich with disasters. Fukushima was the Trifecta, but tornadoes destroyed entire towns like Joplin. A large part of the eastern seaboard badly damaged due to Hurricane Irena. Parts of the northeastern area suffered from a large uunseasonable snowstorm that cut off power for up to 2 weeks. These are the things I refer to. Friends of ours were heating their home in Connecticut with firewood as their power was off for ! ‘week. Food was an issue as was illumination. Their visit back in time to the 18" Century was brief even while they were always surrounded by the trappings of the 21" Century. Earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, snow and floods were commonplace in this country last year. Did you experience some of it? Overseas 3 countries fell into anarchy when their leaders were disposed of. Syria is a zone of terror and some smaller African countries are ina state of war. Social Chaos is ever present in the world. We have it lucky that most of the time we are only forced to deal with Mother Nature, But she can be a real piece of work sometimes. What does this mean to the individual when you or I may not have experienced a natural disaster. Not much, if you think you are immune to this. In 2007 my family went through the | week of firestorms in San Diego when much of the Southern California region was under evacuation orders. In San Diego we had the largest peacetime evacuation of civilian in the history of our Republic. Up to 600,000 SanDiegans were housed in stadiums, fair grounds and high schools. ‘The populace was peaceful, fortunately, unlike the Katrina disaster. We dodged the evacuation bullet by staying in place even. though the fire storm missed our home by 100 yards. Only a few months ago, 7,000 000 people in Arizona and Southern California were without power for 1-5 days when some “fat fingered” tech hit a power switch, These two events put the fear of God into us when we moved to northern Nevada about 3 years ago. In our isolated little town in the mountains, we found we literally jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Fire danger in our area is always high. We live in a seismically active zone. Avalanches can potentially cut us off for days and are not unheard of. Electrical outages can last days as well. We installed a 14 KW generator for back-up power in that eventuality, In 2009 I began an exhaustive and detailed work into the subject of prepping. My time spent to date is in the hundreds of hours. Costs now approach low five figures, mostly in supplies, food, ammo and firearms, I’m not concerned when I make this note since I consider any less than this to be ‘unacceptable when looking at the safeguarding of my family. But this is not a level that one needs to attain to have security if you are cut off from supplies, food, gas, electricity and the police protection we take for granted. If TSHTF in our area, we can easily be on our own for days, so this, governs my thinking In compiling the attached lists and a solid overview of skills and mind set needed to be prepared, I drew from my mentor and friend, a former Marine and master firearms trainer, prepper and all around expert in remaining safe in the chance of untoward events. Through him, I got my first Concealed Weapons Permit and then my second, a Utah permit that gives me concealed carry reciprocity in 32 states. I've trained with him many times on pistols, rifles and shotguns, The 16 page outline contained in this post that was a good catch up for basic skills and a good complement to training, For those of you who have read my prior posts, you know I tend to be long winded. This is my nature and not something I can change, nor do I plan to change. The contents in this post can be down loaded and saved. Nothing is copywrited, so the material is free, free, free. You gotta love free stuff since everything else casts a ton of money. [ also provided some of the good resources prepared around this post if you want to go further in your research. ‘Those web sites are included in the lists. Some might be free since you can review the data. Others provide for the purchase of an ebook, CD or other learning format. Nothing is particularly expensive since price points must be set to allow those of any means to get the details needed for prepping. With that, let’s touch on. the 4 areas of material concern then a couple of points to consider as you choose what level of prepping you will go to. FOOD AND SUPPLIES T recommend having at least | month of food in the form of canned, dehydrated, freeze dried and packaged grub. If you have a cool dry place to store it, 1 month supply will take up on more space than half a small closet. You can even include MREs, the tradition chow of the soldier. They are ‘well prepared, tasty and keep the troops on the move for weeks at atime. MREs have come a long way since hard tack and C-rations. Those of you who serve in the military can attest to that. By the way, many readers of Silver Doctors are former and present military. T think you for your service. The men in my family, including my father and my wife’s father both served honorably in WWII.Some might take food storage to the next level. My plan started with 2 months, escalated to 6 months and then, at the encouragement of my mentor, I now hold a 2 year supply for a family of four. No, I don’texpect to bunker in for 24 months. I do expect to help friends and family when and if they need assistance. That includes my Bank of Brothers, BOB, who also prep and are willing to step in to help iffneeded, We have each other’s back. That area of thinking is the intangible part I alluded to above. Having a small group (5-10 people) who have your back is vital. The food list is. contained in the long shopping list of home prep items that should be part of your purchases. Three words of caution: 1. This will cost some money so start off with the BASICS such as picking up grocery store specials, coupons, 2 for 1 items and discounts will fill that pantry quickly. Most of the 30 day storage will be canned and dry, but occasionally you might want to get some of the dehydrated items. EmergencEssentials.com, Costco.com and Efoods.com are good starter places to kick off your storage plans. Your local supermarket is good too. 2. This prepping can become obsessive. If you don’t take precautions, you can fall way down this rabbit hole since there is no end to this. Like I said in a post a few days back, don’t get so obsessed with this that you become the next reality episode of ‘Hoarders’. There are many ‘ways to acquire items on this list. Books, tools, clothing and other items can be found in profusion at garage sales, Craig's List and thrift stores. [ troll thrift stores because they are areal treasure trove of goodies. 3. This is the serious part. Never, ever tell anyone of your prepping plans unless that person is on a need-to-know basis. Even your kids should be unaware of the EXTENT of your plans. Ifeven one person comes to your door asking for food and you give in, there will be 20 at your door the next day. The human animal is capable of great harm and damage. Your most important job is to keep your family safe! Anything less than that could prove disastrous. Operational Security, also known as OPSEC, is fundamental to this task of keeping your family safe. Your family and those intimates whom you choose to share this knowledge with must also be under OPSEC. WATER ‘You can go weeks without food. Without water, you start breaking down within 12-24 hours, Water is nearly free and can be stored indefinitely. Keeping 100 gallons on hand in plastic jugs is wise. The average person will go through 4 gallons a day for eating, cleaning and waste. What does in must come out, So water is part of the latrine drill. You will eliminate 4-5 pounds of stuff during. aday. Cleanliness is essential, otherwise your chances of infection or disease grow exponentially. The next level of storage is the 100 gallon plus. Using a Water Bob that can be purchased on Cheaperthandirt.com, you can store 100 gallons of clean water in this plastic bladder in your bath tub. It fills from your faucet and has a pump to get the water out. If you have 30 minutes warning, you can fill two of these and have 200 gallons. Now you are up to 300 gallons . . . enough for a family of 4 for at least a week with a 100% reserve. Simply put, you can’t have enough water. KEEPIN‘ UR WATE] AN ‘A couple of drops of bleach per gallon is recommended if you are not sure of safety. Boiling is a good procedure, but uses fuel. Filtering murky water through a Katydyn water filter is a good process. Most of these items can be found on sites like sportsmanclub.com.