Quiz

Thoughts And Concerns About The End Of The World As We Know It

Part 14

It’s time for a prepper reality check.

Prepper Solidarity

99 Relatable Things That Only Preppers Will Understand, By Daisy Luther, www.preppedforshtf.com

Prepping isn’t all about wiling away the hours in a bunker, doing inventory and reloading ammo. It’s about the everyday things we do and the differences in our mindsets from non-preppers. These are some of the things that only real preppers will understand.

Preppers know these everyday things are signs of sanity, but we get used to being misunderstood by the unprepared and the mainstream media, who all seem to think that we’re crazy.

Sometimes it’s fun to have a good laugh about their misconceptions of what we do. Many of the following signs will be so relatable that they’ll probably give you a warm glow. Feel the prepper solidarity!

You might be a prepper if these signs relate to you; check the ones that apply to you and do the self-score at the end.

_____  Pantries are so mainstream…you have food stashed in every room of the house.

_____  You have enough toilet paper to get through a year of uncomfortable digestive upsets … occurring with 6 people simultaneously

_____  Speaking of which, you possess at least 3 different ways to use the bathroom, only one of which involves an actual bathroom.

_____  Your kids know what OPSEC means … at the age of 4.

_____  You have topographical maps of your area … two of each of course.

_____  When you’re forced to interact with “the others” you feel like you are awkwardly censoring your true opinions

_____  You think nothing of treating an injury or illness yourself because “what if there was no doctor?”

_____  Paintball and laser tag are no longer just a fun way to spend an afternoon … they are tactical training.

_____  You’ve purchased duct tape in bulk.

_____  With every major purchase, you contemplate going for the off-grid version.

_____  You have more manual tools than power tools.

_____  You’ve washed entire loads of laundry by hand for practice. (And not just your dainties … we’re talking about jeans and stuff!)

_____  Your kids are not afraid of guns … or fingers pointed like guns … or pastries in the shape of guns … or drawings of guns.

_____  When house-hunting you look for multiple heat and water sources.

_____  You store food in buckets … lots of buckets … maybe even a whole room full of buckets.

_____  You garden with a determination and time commitment normally reserved for endurance athletes training for an Ironman Triathlon.

_____  If you don’t have a water source on your property, you have put in miles of footwork searching for one nearby, and have mapped multiple discreet routes to and from the source, and figured out how to haul the water back to your house on each route.

_____  Your first instinct when hearing about some event on the mainstream news is skepticism. 

_____  You read articles about multiple ways to use white vinegar and nod your head throughout.

_____  You believe that FEMA camps are real and that you are most likely on “The List”.

_____  Instead of CNN, you have alternative news sites bookmarked as computer favorites.

_____  You have enough coffee/tea/favorite-caffeinated-drinks to last you through 3 apocalypses.

_____  You could outfit a small-town pharmacy with all the over-the-counter medications you have stashed away.

_____  You have an instinctive mistrust of anyone working for the government.

_____  You could sink a ship with the weight of your stored ammo.

_____  Your family’s idea of a fun weekend outing includes the local shooting range.

_____  When the power goes out, you calmly light the candles and proceed with whatever you had been dong previously.

_____  A longer-term power outage is called “practice”.

_____  If a like-minded person comes over to your house, they’ll realize you are “one of them” by seeing your reading material. Other folks don’t even notice.

_____  If the FBI came over to your house, they would call your reading material “subversive literature”.

_____  Your children carry a modified bug-out kit in their school backpacks.

_____  You can and dehydrate food with the single-minded fervor of an Amish grandmother facing a 7-year drought.

_____  Calling 911 is not part of your home security plan.

_____  You spend your days-off digging an underground bunker in your backyard.

_____  You have more than a thousand cheapo lighters that you purchased in bulk, stashed away in the back of your linen closet … and you don’t even smoke.

_____  You eat a lot of survival food now, so there is no ‘system shock’ when you are forced to eat only the items you have stocked.

_____  You thought about stocking alcohol to be comfortably numb after the SHTF.

_____  Then you thought about stocking alcohol in mass quantities, to use as barter.

_____  Then you thought … forget about stocking alcohol, you should have your own still.

_____  You have enough salt to create another Dead Sea.

_____  You purchased 50 of those little EDC multitasking tools as stocking stuffers for your friends, family, workmates, neighbors … and random strangers.

_____  Speaking of Christmas, you gave Conflicted to everyone last year.

_____  When your friends ask about your favorite authors, instead of Hemmingway, Tolkien, or Kerouac, you get a blank stare when you tell them it’s John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman.

_____  You know exactly how many Mountain House buckets it takes to make a base for a single bed.

_____  You don’t stock up on milk. You get an actual cow.

_____  Your family doesn’t dare take something from the food stockpile without marking it off the list.

_____  Your kids know how to don a gas mask in 30 seconds.

_____  Everyone in your survival group carries the same firearm so that ammo is standardized.

_____  You have non-electric versions of appliances like wheat grinders, washing machines, and coffee makers.

_____  You yell at the TV every time a commercial for Doomsday Preppers comes on. Oh. Wait. You don’t have a TV ... but if you did you’d yell at it.

_____  Your family is no longer surprised when you announce, “Hey, we’re going to learn how to make _____________________!” (insert anything here)

_____  You have more how-to books stored on hard-drives than most public libraries have on the bookshelves.

_____  Your children have a plan in case they need to bug out from school.

_____  Alternatively, you homeschool the kids and bugging out is part of the curriculum.

_____  You have more than three ways to cook dinner if the power goes out: a woodstove, a barbecue, a sun oven, a fire-pit, and/or a volcano stove

_____  First Blood and Red Dawn are basic training films for your family.

_____  You’ve accepted the idea that if you’re not on someone’s watch list, you’re probably not doing it right.

_____  Your 7-year-old knows Morse code.

_____  You’re secretly disappointed when the electricity comes back on after only a few minutes.

_____  You know more ways to make a homemade knife than the entire population of your local prison combined.

_____  You don’t just rotate food, you rotate ammo.

_____  You know the distance from your door to your front gate is precisely 207 yards.

_____  You call moving to a new house a “strategic relocation”.

_____  You have mapped out at least 3 different routes by car and 2 different routes on foot to get to your bug-out location.

_____  You know the difference between “Tyvek” and “Tychem” suits, and in which instance they should be used.

_____  Ditto the finer points of N-95 vs. N-100 masks.

_____  You watch The Walking Dead to critique their survival tactics ... and you were secretly delighted to see Beth building a fire in a Dakota pit.

_____  Speaking of fire, you can start one in at least 3 different ways, and you always carry a lighter, a Fresnel lens, and a magnesium rod.

_____  You have two (or more) of everything important … because “one is none.”  

_____  You have a decoy food supply.

_____  Your kids think it’s a fun game to see who can find the most potential weapons in a room.

_____  Even your dog has a bug out bag, which she carries herself.

_____  You have elected NOT to purchase greater armament because you plan on upgrading with your future assailant’s weaponry.

_____  Your EDC includes a knife, firearm w/extra mag, flashlight, Mylar blanket, Chapstick, and an ounce of silver … and that’s just for walking the dog.

_____  The trunk of your car has enough supplies to carry the family through an entire week during a major blizzard.

_____  One criterion for your new winter coat is that it fits over your body armor.

_____  Your neighbors separate their compost for you into a) chicken food, b) garden food, and c) other.

_____  You scour travel-size aisles because they fit better in bug-out bags and they make great barter items.

_____  You check out the garden center and pest control section for potential weapons.

_____  Your subscribed channels for YouTube and other bookmarked favorites now contain more prepper and alternative media sites than cute animal sites.

_____  Christmas and birthday gifts have a prepper theme.

_____  You actually know what the letters “EMP” stand for.

_____  Every time there is a small household “disaster” like a power outage or local water “boil order” you just grab your emergency supplies and remind dubious family members, “See, told you it pays to be prepared.”

_____  Your freeze-dried food has a longer expiration date than you do

_____  You know how to make bows out of skis and arrows out of garden bamboo.

_____  You have or are seriously considering an old armored personnel carrier to turn into an RV.

_____  You know that Falling Skies has better ideas for post-apocalyptic survival than The Walking Dead or Z Nation, but you still watch them all just in case.

_____  Your friend asks, “Do you have enough bullets?” Then you both laugh and laugh because you know you can never have enough.

_____  You changed your computer’s home page from MSN to Drudge Report or SHTFplan.

_____  You have no problem knocking on strangers’ doors to ask for fruit tree cuttings.

_____  You have vacuum packed underwear in a plastic tub stashed somewhere in your house.

_____  You just might have more medical supplies than the local ER.

_____  The Co-op and Costco recognize you but pretend not to. They know better than to ask questions about your purchases.

_____  If you’re a man you are no longer embarrassed to buy tampons and sanitary napkins because they have so many uses.

_____  If you’re a woman you know you don’t need to buy tampons or sanitary napkins because so many other options exist.

_____  You actually own a toilet seat that fits on a bucket.

_____  You have enough wood cut and stacked to form a barricade around your whole property.

_____  Admit it. Every time the power goes out you run to see if your car starts, just in case this was actually an EMP … so you can get a jump on hunkering down or buying out the store.

_____  You have considered filtering water with a coffee filter or a t-shirt.

Count the number of checked signs above, and select your prepper status below:

_____  1 – 20              You’re a newbie prepper.

_____  21 – 40            You’re an apprentice prepper.

_____  41 – 60            You joke about wearing a tin-foil hat.

_____  61 – 80            Your neighbors are worried that you aren’t joking about the hat.

_____  81 – 100          Your neighbors have seen you wearing your tin-foil hat.

You’ve earned it! Cover it with stickers, achievement awards, and personal accomplishment pins, and wear it proudly.