As the title indicates, today we’ll be discussing how to finally have the “prepper talk” with your family. Now, for those of you who have been preppers all or most of your lives, this article won’t be particularly relevant. If you’re a parent, but were a prepper before you had kids, chances are a true sit down talk won’t really be necessary, as you’ve likely been bringing the little rascals up to be prepared all their lives. But if, like Doug, you happen to have recently gotten serious about prepping, you’re probably going to want to let your family in on the importance of what you’re thinking and doing to ensure you all have a bright future ahead of you – even if the TEOTWAWKI just so happens to rear its ugly head your way.
We’ll start off with Doug’s question, then I’ll dive in and give answering this mammoth question a shot. If you have any advice for Doug, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below – just remember that this is a particularly sensitive topic, so please make sure your suggestions are both polite and considerate. No one wants to cause friction in their family, especially when the objective of having “the talk” with them in the first place is purely out of concern for their own well being.
Doug’s Prepper Question:
I’m loving the blog but I haven’t read it all just yet. I was wondering if you might have some suggestions for me as a new-ish preper. Sorry, if you have already covered this in the blog.
How do you talk to Family about emergency preparedness for the long term?
I want to prepare for a local disaster such as earthquake, fire, floods or any other localized incident that disrupts or removes infrastructure, food and water shortage, financial collapse or global natural disaster.
In a wider, long term context, I want my family to be prepared for wide scale infrastructure breakdown due to the effects of global warning.
Here’s how I see the next 20 years playing out: the extreme weather patterns, due to global warming, will cause widespread crop failures which will cause food prices too rise dramatically. The same extreme weather patterns may cause severe drought in which water supplies will be drastically diminished. In my geographical region the largest water source will be annexed by the most powerful military in an effort to maintain control of the critical water supply. This will cause severe water shortages in Canada. Similar global conditions will start a widespread financial collapse leading to mass unemployment and large-scale human population displacement. The lack of food water and stability often breed disease and armed conflict.
In my opinion, these are the most likely events for which to be prepared. Again, in my opinion, these are rational conclusions given past and current events.
My dilemma, as I see it is as follows: my family are typical North Americans who are dependent on the infrastructure they currently take for granted: electricity, mobility, food, clean water, EMS, education and communications. I want to impress upon them how fragile all the systems are without them thinking I’ve been watching too many apocalypse movies. They seem to have been okay with my 72 hour preparedness kit as they grasp the realities of potential short-term emergencies – like the ice storm in early 2014. I need to have them understand that all these things could go away and not return for an extended period of time.
I just do not know how to have that conversation.
Our Response: Prepper Talk Tips
Right off the bat, I’ll start off by saying that no one knows your family better than you do. If I give you a piece of advice and you think that if you use it, your family is going to take it the wrong way, don’t use that piece of advice. Use your knowledge of your family members’ personalities and your past experiences with them to dictate how you’ll approach this colossal topic.
Now that my disclaimer’s out of the way, on to the beef of the advice.
I feel that as preppers, we’ve been told so many times that what we do is crazy that we start to think everyone but us sees the behavior of preparing as irrational. But that’s just not true. Preparation isn’t irrational at all, and as human beings, we do it all the time. Hell, it’s part of what’s made us progress and advance as a species in the first place; without the act of preparing, a lot of us wouldn’t be here today. Our ancestors couldn’t have gotten very far if they didn’t learn to prepare for long, harsh winters. Even today, we all know those who start planning for retirement early usually have a much easier time later in life. Preparing for difficult times is one of the most rational things we as human beings do.
Where non-preppers start to get apprehensive about preppers is when all that talk about the terrible things that could happen in the future get’s pulled out of the box. I’m sure this doesn’t need to be further elaborated on – mention the possibility of societal collapse to your run of the mill mom and dad and you’re going to get some glares shot in your direction.
And while yes, we as preppers have trained ourselves to take these possibilities seriously as threats to our personal and familial existence, to everybody else, you will (unfortunately) sound like a rerun of a zombie movie if you bring it up. I wish there was a way around it, but I’m sorry to say, doesn’t look like there is one.
So my advice to you in terms of a potential discussion with your family: don’t bring that stuff up.
I know it sounds counter intuitive to sort of have “the talk” with your family without actually discussing what you’re worried about with them, but in my opinion, you’ve got to, or else you risk them ignoring you completely. And once you’ve opened that can of worms, you can’t close it again.
Instead, I’d advise you to sort of continue on the route you’ve already managed to begin on yourself. You started them off with a 72 hour kit, eased them into short term preps, showed them how rational it was to be prepared in case another short term emergency situation happened: that’s an exceptionally good start.
What next? Try simply extending the very same emergency so to speak: “Guys, I’m worried that another ice storm, like the one that happened in early 2014, will take place again, but this time knocking the electricity out for quite a bit longer.” Thomas and I went through that very same ice storm last year just south of you, and from having lived through it I can tell you that:
- The electricity did not come back on right away everywhere. Our house took roughly 5-6 days to regain connection to the power grid, and I’m sure there were at least a few other places where the disconnect lasted longer. &
- There was plenty of reason to believe that emergency might have gone on for longer. Hell, they couldn’t even predict how long it was going to take them to fix the downed wires, a fact that was reported repeatedly over the radio during the emergency.
These facts mean that your worry, while unlikely to be realized, is still justified.
Once your family is on the same page as you in terms of imaging this kind of situation could take place, ask them for suggestions – particular things they could do if the electricity didn’t come back for two weeks – or even a whole month. While they may still struggle to imagine this kind of situation, if they say that isn’t likely, again point out the fact that while the emergency was taking place, no one could say how long the power would be down. That means that maybe further complications meant that, yes some places had their power back up, but not all of them would be up quickly, and maybe not quickly enough in your part of town.
After they suggest a few things they could do after the emergency took place to make things easier (a fire in the backyard, say?) ask them if there are things they could buy now that they think would probably help make living through that kind of a situation easier. Thank them for their suggestions, then go out and fulfill those preps, showing them their input is valuable to you.
Gradually get them to push their ideas for preps further and further off into the future. And furthermore, don’t be afraid to prep on your own. You want a backup generator? Buy it. Worried about what your wife will say? Explain how there’s plenty of good food in the freezer and if for some reason the electricity goes out in the summer, that expensive food could all be thawed out. Always explain your actions with responses that you know they will consider very rational.
I’ll take a side note to add that I’d advise against hiding any prepper purchases from your spouse. It’s just not a good idea to be on bad terms. If your wife doesn’t like the amount of money you want to pour into preps, dig around for deals. You’re sure to find quite a few. A lot of the gear we have isn’t expensive at all – but it works phenomenally well. Ask what she thinks a good budget is and work within those constraints – it’s entirely possible, and after all, prepping is no good if you’re tearing up your family trying to do it, or if you’re running yourself into debt.
Eventually, your family will probably catch on that you’re really serious about preparing for the worst, and considering each time, if you’re on your toes and are vigilant enough, you’ll have given them a very good reason why your prep is valuable and important – they’ll hopefully begin to feel pretty comfortable with the idea of prepping for bad situations. It’ll feel a little like second nature to them, and they’ll finally begin to understand why prepping should be seen as a common sense thing to do.
So maybe they won’t believe the exact crises you’re preparing for will pan out. Does that mean they’ll reject all forms of prepping? Probably not.
If you continue to do things slowly, you know, make sure not to go out and buy a massive shipment of food, water, and firearms to stockpile all in one go, your family will probably just begin to think of you as the overly concerned dad. That’s certainly not a bad thing (and it’s infinitely better than the “crazy prepper” dad). In the back of their minds, they’ll probably be thankful… after all if something does happen, they know who to go to – dad’s got things covered.
Growing up, my family never called themselves preppers, but that’s pretty much spot on what they were. While they’ve probably never thought twice about EMPs or economic collapse, they have many signature prepper behaviours, including 6-12 months worth of food stockpiled and a desire to always be ready for the worst. Without prompting, my grandmother will tell me every so often that in her life she’s learned, “You never know what could happen.” And that’s enough of a reason for her, and the rest of my family, to stock up and button down. You could lose your job, your health could completely deteriorate, a really bad storm could hit. These are all very possible things that every person from anywhere in the world will admit could happen. So why not prepare for them – just in case.
I cannot stress enough how careful you should be about what you say to your family. It’s so very important to get this “conversation” right. Getting it wrong and going too fast could mean a hell of a lot of family tension and frustration, or it could mean you’re pegged as the family “nut.” You don’t want that. You shouldn’t want that – nobody should. So break up the conversation. Have a number of little talks about particular things – relevant to their lives – that they might also worry about, and therefore feel that they should prepare for. If you know they’re not going to take economic collapse and EMTs well, throw the potential of job loss their way.
Prepping is a lifestyle, and if you can ease them into that way of living without scaring them off, you’ve got the game set and match. While it may comfort you if they did share your opinions on the possibility of economic collapse and EMTs, they don’t need to share your opinions on those topics in order to believe it’s a good idea to have long term preps. You just need to give them reasons, that they will believe are perfectly valid, for why they should be prepping in the first place.
The last thing I’d like to mention is that it’s okay for your family members’ lifestyles to be dependent on “the system,” so to speak, today. Things like electricity, mobility, food, clean water, healthcare, education, and communications still exist, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be taking advantage of them while they’re still up and running. You’d be surprised how quickly people can switch gears once things really start looking bad – after all, they’ll have to at that point. So long as your family is prepared in case of the worst, I see absolutely no reason for them to reject living life with all of the present day luxuries that are available to them now, just because those luxuries may not be around anymore at some point in their lives. Don’t put yourself in a box either just because you’re a prepper. You can have a lifestyle that’s dependent on those luxuries today. So long as you have the means to not be dependent on those luxuries if they happen to disappear tomorrow, that’s all that really matters.
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We live in Michigan – on the west side of the State. Therefore, we are fully accustomed to weather extremes from brutal winters, blizzards, ice storms, power outages, flooding, torrential rains, tornado’s, wind storms, droughts, high heat, miserable humidity, mosquito’s, ticks, biting flies, no-see-um’s. vermin, varmints, criminal’s, and the obnoxious neighbor “neighborhood Nazi” who thinks they’re in charge and most likely the first to snitch… Now kids are being encouraged to become equivalents of the Hitler Youth….
Michigan is heavily wooded in places. There is a culture of sportsman-hunters that know those woodlands like their own back yards. While much of it is state owned lands- these sportsman are territorial over favored hunting – fishing grounds where they consistently take big game and good catches. This is WHY, I have Zero plans to bug out to the woods for any reason – being weather extremes and gonzo gunned up hunters set on protecting prime hunting turf….
What Michigan ( all Great lake States ) have going for them is an abundance of fresh water. Even if the city water supply was to shut down- there would be access to water in some manner… Where I live, it isn’t that difficult to drive a water pipe into the ground and find a good shallow well of drinkable water. Michigan is like sopping wet sponge! Water abounds.
Melting snow for water these days would be a risky venture – as we too are constantly being Chem-Trail sprayed. I am not so sure a good water filter would eliminate whatever the hell it is they’re dumping on us! If you’re lucky enough to have a good ground water well for your family – you’re golden.
Prepping for us as a family has existed since the days of the Cold War with Nikita Khrushchev!
Our area has been hit with powerful Tornado’s multiple times. As well as crippling winter blizzards. So – when the lights were out temporarily, and the city was at a standstill and nothing at all open – we still had plenty of food, water, heat, proper clothing and Dad was a WW-2 vet who was armed and knew how to use it!
Today – we still keep a good supply of the daily necessities on hand and six months to 1 years’ worth of food in the pantry. Mom and Dad were raised during the Great Depression and lived through the War years of rationing and short supplies. So, they’re frugal and waste nothing and re-use or recycle nearly everything… which was and is good – because we learned these survival measures from them.
Dad is a good all-around handyman and a very good mechanic – so he has always managed to keep his vehicles going until they were 30+ years old up to this day. This is something I also try to do… currently driving a 2000 vintage vehicle— I’m not so sure it’ll last another 15 years though. It might. I cannot afford to own and maintain two or three vehicles – and trucks and SUV’s are expensive to operate and insure. So, I drive a full size four door passenger car. I had a Jeep Wrangler – but it wasn’t at all what I wanted or really needed in my life. ( plus they are grossly over rated )
Something I feel is probably more realistic than any other scenario is this = if and when a catastrophic SHTF – LEE – TEOTWAWKI times hit – pretty much NO ONE is going to survive it – unless you’ve got a WILLY WONKA GOLDEN TICKET to the Federal Under Ground SUPER BUNKERS – and even those people days will be numbered. The Government will not try to evacuate the people to FEMA camps or anywhere else – they’ll just let us die by the millions. There is no where you can run off to and then think you can hunker down and Out-Wit, Out-Last, Out-Play all of the others who’ll also be looking for an edge to outlast you via dispatching you when and where they can. Which is the sick side of what Prepper Blog’s try to convince others is the only way Survive it all.
If the whole nation has been Nuked and blown to hell and everything is destroyed and radiated with toxic fall out – Who the HELL wants to face that and try to live out their remaining dying days in that nightmare? NO ONE! Game Over! Nuclear Winter Time is not a sportsman paradise!
What has been happening and is currently happening – is a systematic corralling of We the People by an ever tightening of the screws on laws, regulations, ordinances by the Federal, State, Local Governance as a gaining Police State, handed to us by a corrupted Plutocratic-Autocratic Government full of criminal’s and social pariahs, A spider web of spy networks watching every move you make fully involving ALL major Insurance Corporations and Inter-National Banksters – driving a cashless society agenda, REAL TIME RFID monitoring, forced federal Healthcare and Inoculations, an Idiocy for Dummies Education System, the paradigm of Celebrity and Sports Hero Worship, Rampant Hedonism, the constant chipping away at the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, a complicit News Media ( lame-stream media ) Constant propaganda and liberal leftist – socialist/communist agendas, the ultra-Right and its Game of Thrones Fascism, the illegal and out of control IRS and Federal Reserve, political correctness, open border policies without background checking run by the welfare system – to gerrymander voting districts, forced Islamification ( Satan worship ) and the villainization of Christians & Jews, criminalization of the Military Veteran, Drug cartel operations run by the CIA and Banksters, the Fake Drug Wars, Military Industrial Complex and endless worldwide warfare for profit, ( citizenship by military combat duty too ) privatized corporate Prison systems for profit (crime indeed pays for some) the coming of State and Federal forced labor farms and industries around the globe, ( so you could commit a crime in Alabama and could find yourself working a prison labor farm in Africa for 15 -20 years! ) the owning and controlling of the climate and fresh air – waters – lands by Corporations owned by Political Family Cartels, (overlords) an insane United Nations New World Order Policy and directed Terrorism to force capitulation, all of this is just the tip of the looming Ice Berg our society is heading towards — and there is NO Prepping Strategy for that! Sorry.
Want to survive? Keep a very low profile, stay out of debt, avoid paper trails, zip your lip about your family and want you’re up to ( dump selfies, texts, tweets, emoji’s, social media – talk about spying on yourself ) Become Handy, Clever, Self-sufficient, Tenacious, Relentless in your pursuits as an avid Junk Pile, Dumpster Diver, as well as serious Grublettes searching garage sales for things that can be re-purposed or re-sold – for cash only, It isn’t about the accumulation of Things or more Stuff – it’s about what will keep your asses alive and thriving when stores are closed under martial law. I’m still looking for an old usable Westinghouse/General Electric wringer washer and galvanized rise tubs… for next to nothing.
It does sound like you’re in a great spot for bugging in. You’ve obviously planned this out thoroughly, and your family’s skill set sounds perfect for the kinds of natural disasters and other prepper issues you’ll likely have to deal with in the future. Handymen and mechanics are worth more than their weight in gold – so excellent that your dad is good at these things!
I honestly am not sure if they’d bother to nuke a whole country or if they’d just worry about nuking the cities that would hurt a country most (depends on how much nuke power one’s got I guess!), but yes, I agree that the vast majority of people will die if the nuke the whole country to the ground, and this part:
“If the whole nation has been Nuked and blown to hell and everything is destroyed and radiated with toxic fall out – Who the HELL wants to face that and try to live out their remaining dying days in that nightmare? NO ONE! Game Over! Nuclear Winter Time is not a sportsman paradise!” Basically yes. Who the hell does want to face that. It’ll be a nightmare for sure, and if that ever happens, I do not envy those who try to survive through it. Definitely do not understand the mentality of people who are actually *happy* to see disaster. I prep because I want to avoid hardship down the line – not because I want the hardship to prove my theories right. I’d love it if the world were a safer place!
“It isn’t about the accumulation of Things or more Stuff – it’s about what will keep your asses alive and thriving when stores are closed under martial law.”
Definitely. And keeping your asses alive and thriving in the face of natural disaster and other unexpected or unwanted turns life hands you. Prepping is so important, whether you’re worried about the stores closing or not. Something is going to eventually go wrong in your life (job loss, car breaking down, etc.) and the more prepared you are, the better chance you have of getting through that situation. Honestly, so many reasons to prep.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience & insight! Hope to see you around the blog again :)
Elise – liked the article! It’s not easy to go outside of the ‘norm’ and get your thoughts and feelings across to your loved ones about prepping. The most important thing is that it comes from a good place, a place of protection and love. Start small and take baby steps if necessary!
Definitely agree!
I came across your website when you DM’d me on my @livaddventure ADHDTwitter account. At first I thought this was a spoof blog. My apologies. Perhaps having ADHD makes me extra impulsive and unprepared but it never occurred to me that people prepared like this. I know we in South Africa don’t have the extreme weather that you obviously experience. At the turn of the century (Y2K for those who remember that far back) caused many South Africans to stockpile canned food and candles but that was about it. A fascinating read.
That’s a pretty interesting response (thinking it was a spoof blog)! Although I think it’s a good idea to prep no matter where you are in the world, I think with the natural disasters, the incredibly cold harsh winters, economic instability, the potential of job loss, and the enormous dependence we have on a power grid that can pretty easily go down (hell, ours went down last year for 5-6 days), it’s especially important to prep in North America.
We had a Y2K scare here as well, and that’s also the only time I can think of that most every person “prepped” so to speak. Many Canadians & Americans also stocked up on water bottles and canned goods, and then after the scare passed, went back to their regular lives and didn’t spare a second thought about prepping again.
Preppers seem to be a small group of people in Canada/the United States. We really aren’t the norm, though I’d say we’ve been increasing in number pretty quickly in the past few years due mostly to job loss and instability. TV shows like “Doomsday Preppers” have also made the idea of prepping reach out a bit more, though I do think most episodes of that show depict some really eccentric people (they have to entertain viewers somehow, right?).
Anyhow, that’s some background. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your perspective! Like I said, really interesting to hear you thought it was a spoof blog at first :).
In the U.S. and Canada we may be able to prep as much as we want. However, there is at least one country (I don’t remember which one) where it is against the law to to have more than two weeks worth of food in your home. People should be aware of the laws where they are at.
I think you’re thinking of the UK during World War II. It became against the law to hoard more than 2 weeks worth of food because there wasn’t enough food to go around – it needed to be rationed or others would starve.
Nowadays, it’s perfectly legal to hoard food in every country – to my knowledge. It’s just during wartime and times of crisis that governments occasionally step in to try helping those who were not wise enough, or not able, to prep ahead of time.
Whether it’s “fair” that governments sometimes do this is questionable. One thing’s for certain, if you want to keep your stockpile to yourself, and not share it with your entire neighbourhood – it’s always a good idea to keep your preps hush hush. If you advertise the fact that you have a huge stash of food, there’s always a chance that the government, or even unprepared individuals themselves, will come knocking at your door the first sight of a problem.
Unfortunately for me, I had a week of getting too pumped about the world situation a couple of months ago. I began explaining to my honey of 32 years why I wanted to buy silver bars, LifeStraws, a few more boxes of ammo, etc. She said if things got as bad as I described, she didn’t want to go on. I told her it was our duty to go on – we have no choice. She took what I said to heart; too much to heart. Since then, she’s suffered from a series of illnesses. I wanted her to be aware of what ‘could’ happen and she came to see what I was explaining as something that ‘would’ happen. I’ve regretted doing this to her ever since. Terrible thing, actually – and I wished I could undo it, but as you say, once out, there’s no putting it back.
Oof :(. That’s terrible. Have you tried any damage control? You know, telling her that these situations aren’t likely to happen, and even if they do, there will still be plenty of good things about life to look forward to? For instance, there will always be good people around, even in the worst of conditions, trying to help others even if they have very little themselves.
Also, check out the SHTF School blog: http://shtfschool.com/blog/ This guy went through the worst modern systematic collapse you could imagine and he and many others around him came out the other end fine. After about a decade or so, society actually managed to rebuild itself. Show your wife that humans are remarkably resilient and that – no matter how we’re knocked down – with time and effort we turn things around and eventually find a way back to better times.
A huge part of survival is psychological optimism, without that, your chances of living through dire situations dramatically drops. You’ve opened her eyes to the terrible damage humanity can do to itself, now open her eyes to the fact that society can actually heal and recover, even after such horrific events. She needs some hope; do your best to give it to her.
Thanks. I’ve had these talks with her and things seem to be on the mend; however, she is still experiencing some medical issues and has seen our doctor. If persistent, she’s agreed to see the gastro-interologist next. (She’s very devout in her faith but she also plays psychologist for many of our friends who are suffering from one malady or another and she takes everything to heart, God bless her – she is quite wonderful.) I appreciate and hear what you’re saying.
Glad to hear things are on the mend, and hope she feels better soon! She sounds like a really great woman – you’re lucky to have her! :)
Well, here we are a year later. The French terrorists were last weekend and we spent the time since saddened and wondering about our president’s insistence that the refugees still be allowed to come to the USA. We are against it as it has been proven that radicalization can come to even second generation muslims. We are not bigots, but we also do not have a death wish. We’re still prepping and I believe we could weather any non-lethal environment, but we’re also getting old and that is a problem for us. Good news is my better half has come to appreciate the weapons we have and is quite a good shot! Her comfort level is much better than it used to be. Hard to believe people can’t find a way to live in peace. History shows the same old stuff over and over. Who wants to control the world and all that’s in it? The devil’s promise. Death to the devil.
Have just discovered your great blog… lots of weekend reading to catch up on!
Thank you…
Thanks for stopping by! Hope you find it useful!
Let’s see. How to have the talk.
You know I really don’t remember that part. I just started prepping and everyone else got on board.
Then you’re definitely one of the lucky ones whose families have followed them into the deep end ;).
Thank you for this useful response. Your suggestions will go a long way in helping me protect my family and prepare for what may come.
After reading my response and my question I realize that I must clarify my previous statement: “…my family are typical North Americans who are dependent on the infrastructure they currently take for granted…”. I should have included myself as a “typical North American”. I feel like the virtual ‘poster child’ for grid life.
Thanks and Cheers!
Doug
And thank you again for the question! I think it’s a great topic that a lot of people can benefit from discussing.
If you ever try something that you find works really well, do stop by with a comment here. Love to know what’s been effective!