Category Archives: Preparedness Basic & Advanced

I recently heard a term that, as both a prepper as well as an urban homesteader, spoke to me. It is such a simple term that I wish I had devised it. Fortunately by tracking down the term’s creator I met an interesting group of people that share the same common goals. The creator of this term is Mike Bostick, and the group I am talking about it the Prepper Reality Network.

While today’s article is focused on the term prepsteading, its origins, meanings, and why there needs to be a differentiation between it and homesteading, I do want to mention the PRN, and encourage you to listen to their nightly call in internet talk show and participate in their online community. This is a new group, but from what I have learned in talking with Mike, they are most interested in building a vibrant online community where preppers can learn, socialize, and feel welcome.

Now on to prepsteading….

Prepsteading is the combination of prepping and homesteading, and makes use of the best elements of both.
Traditionally homesteading was done as part of the back to the land movement where individuals wanted to have a closer connection to the earth. In more recent times, homesteading is attractive primarily to those with a concern for sustainability and appropriate technology. This means that most homesteading information is geared toward green living.  I think homesteaders are default preppers.  Do you?

Prepping, as a general rule, is primarily gear driven and many (if not most) prepper activities revolve around acquiring resources and storing supplies.

Both of these terms describe admirable traits, and can complement each other. You do not have to be a hippy to want to live on a sustainable and ecologically friendly homestead, just as you don’t have to be paranoid to store supplies to sustain you during a large scale disaster. That is where prepsteading comes in.

By definition, a disaster involves great loss, and catastrophic disasters can take decades to recover from. It is not a stretch to assume that you may lose your supplies, or run out of supplies if the disaster was large enough. In the prepping community many people plan to “bug out” or leave their residences in order to move to the country so that they may be able to produce their own food. A few rare pioneers such as James Rawles of survivalblog recommend living at your bug out location (BOL), full time.

Prepsteading is the concept of mitigating catastrophic disasters living as self-reliant life as possible. By producing your own food, creating your own infrastructure, and disconnecting as much as possible from the grid, you are insulating yourself from disruptions caused by the failure of normal infrastructure.

I am an urban homesteader, I try to produce as much food as I can, and reduce my need for utilities a much as practical while still living in a suburban area. I would love to own my own homestead, but I have to balance my resources. Time taken to build and maintain a self-reliant farm competes with the time needed to earn the resources to pay for it.

I think Mike has a great idea, and I would love to see the concept take off and grow. In my opinion the more people that learn to grow their own food and make their own way in life the stronger our country will be, and the more disaster resilient the citizens will become.
If you want to learn more, Mike has a weekly internet call in show where he talks about this and much more…

This Friday morning I was sad to discover an article on emergency management.com in the “Disaster Academia” section entitled Doomsday Preppers are Socially Selfish.   Why do people think Preppers are selfish? It amazes me how someone in emergency management that claims through her “academic” title to be intelligent fails to grasp how preppers actually contribute to safer communities.*

Both federal, state, and local emergency management agencies, as well as NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) like the Red Cross constantly educate the public on the need to have basic preparedness kits to be able to take care of themselves until the emergency response resources can be organized and distributed.  The CERT program (community emergency response teams) is a federal/state program with a proven track record.  The program takes citizens with an interest in disaster response/emergency preparedness and provides training in urban search and rescue, first aid, and other vital response skills.  The goal of this emergency management program is to reduce the load on “professional” responders by using trained citizens based in their own communities. No one is better suited for CERT than preppers.

Ms. Valerie Lucus-McEwen goes on to say:

You might wonder why someone like me, who has been in the business of encouraging disaster preparedness for a very long time, is so critical of people who are doing just that. It’s because they are being socially selfish – preparing themselves and the hell with everyone else.  Instead of spending time and energy making changes that would benefit the larger community, in their very narrow focus of loyalty they are more concerned about themselves.

This is false on many levels, but I will pick out a couple.  First, even if Preppers are Selfish, by logical extension so is buying car insurance.  It is spending personal resources to protect against a potential future problem.  Does Ms. Lucus-McEwen want me to pay for everyone’s car insurance if I am to have some for myself?  Prepping, like insurance, is something everyone can get, and everyone makes a decision how much they want to invest.  It is not saying ”to hell with everyone else”, its saying I am going to be socially RESPONSIBLE, and spend time and energy making changes that benefits the larger community by freeing governmental resources to go to those truly in need.  No government, organization, or person can afford to be totally prepared for everything, we have seen the devastation caused by Presidential Disasters like Katrina, Gustav, and  most recently Sandy.  The government has good plans, and some great people, and a deep pocket to pay for response, but it is not the solution to every problem, nor can it be.

She then goes on to say:

Emergency Managers can’t afford that kind of attitude.  It is diametrically opposed to everything we do. Our job is to prepare individuals and communities and jurisdictions and regions and – ultimately – the globe for disasters, knowing we won’t always succeed.  I could find statistics about how unprepared some citizens are, and then show you hundreds of active and volunteer CERT teams preparing whole communities. In major disasters (think 9-11 or the Christ Church earthquake or Superstorm Sandy), survivors for the most part WANT to help each other.

I too am a professional emergency manager, my degree is in Emergency Management, and I have responded to several large disasters during my tenure in this field.  My experience causes me to feel the exact opposite.  I cannot afford  to not assist preppers.  Personal disaster preparedness is EXACTLY what we should strive to induce in the American populace.  Personal responsibility and self-reliance has made this country great.  Instead of looking down our noses at citizen preppers, and smugly judge their reasons, we should focus on what we have in common, and learn to work with them because we, as emergency managers have more in common with preppers than we have differences.

*Update

The website has changed names and the article has since been removed.