Most discussions on prepping start with basic needs – water, food, self-defense, etc. These are all important but your ability to store these supplies and to have long term sustainability are critically dependent on two factors:
1. Where are you located?
2. Who is committed to work with you for mutual benefit?
Location
The ideal location for an extended crisis would be:
· At least 20 acres of land in a remote location zoned for agricultural use. Should have excellent soil, available water source, warm climate, far from major highways and set well back from the access road.
· Conservative state and local politics and like-minded neighbors.
· Large garden area with rich black soil and full sun exposure.
· Large pasture area for grazing animals.
· Enough forest to continuously harvest wood for heating and cooking.
· Southern exposure for passive solar heating and solar electric power.
· Multiple structures suitable for group living (10+ people), climate-controlled storage, vehicle protection/fuel storage and livestock housing.
· Barriers to limit outside access and channel trespassers into an easily observed path.
· Avoid foreseeable risks, such as:
o Areas with above average hurricane or tornado activity
o Low-lying areas prone to flooding
o Major cities and natural “lines of drift” (easiest paths to escape the city)
o Nuclear plants and military installations
Unfortunately, neither I nor most of you have an ideal location. There are 3 common situations that most people find themselves in:
1. An urban environment with none of the above assets. This severely limits your options to store supplies or to produce food and energy. It exposes you to violence as people become desperate and limits your ability to leave safely due to population density.
2. A suburban environment with close neighbors and few of the above assets. This provides more options – both for storage if you own a home and to find allies in the neighborhood for mutual defense. It is still limited, however, since you are unlikely to be able to meet your food and energy needs beyond a short duration event.
3. A rural area with anywhere from a few to many of the above assets. Ideally you have more property allowing you to have a garden, harvest wood, meet like minded friends and work within a community to share resources.
Start with a critical assessment of your current location. What options do you have if the grid is down, the supply chain is disrupted or there is a social collapse? If you are not comfortable with the situation – do you have the career, family, and monetary flexibility to move to a more sustainable site? If not, can you own a second property or do you have family or friends that own property closer to the ideal? If so, evaluate your ability to relocate (bug-out) in a crisis. What have you done to prepare this remote site for such an event. Do you have a vehicle, fuel, and a route to get there? If you do not own the property, what resources do you need to bring or pre-position?
Team Members
Along with a more sustainable and secure site – you will need more than your spouse and kids to make this work based on:
1. Security – law enforcement and military professionals know that you cannot adequately defend yourself without more people. The threat will not be a teenager breaking in to get drug money. In a serious or prolonged event, groups of people will be desperate to steal your supplies without regard for your life. A couple cannot defend a home 24x7 against a group of people attacking at random times from different directions.
2. Workload – talk to anyone who has tried homesteading – harvesting wood, gardening, raising livestock, and performing maintenance consume a huge amount of time and energy. Add the need for security details and you are quickly overwhelmed.
3. Skills – Regardless of your education, career, or hobbies – none of us have the background to cover all the bases of independent living. Ideally, we have a group of people with medical, carpentry, mechanical, gardening, livestock, self-defense, and other skills at our site or available within the community.
It is useful to think in terms of 3 layers of allies in the event of a crisis:
1. The innermost layer is a Team of people that are fully committed to working and living together if required. These are your extended family; people you trust to share your living space and resources; people you trust with your life if necessary.
2. The next layer moving outward is a Network of trusted associates. These are people you would welcome into your team but who are unlikely to relocate due to their mindset, family / work commitments or location.
3. The third layer is the Community of people with whom you have a more modest personal relationship but you judge to be honest, hardworking, reasonable, and like- minded about the potential for living with less in the future. These are the local folks you can barter with to obtain food, get the tractor fixed or help build a chicken coop.
Once you have settled on a location, start identifying friends, neighbors, and local businesses that might fit into these categories. You can meet people at social events, in church, as part of a political group, among homeschooling organizations, in local shops, etc. Be creative in seeking out opportunities to strike up conversations. You can start with relatively benign comments about what is going on in the world and see if they are like minded. If this looks promising, you can share opinions about what is behind various news stories and share your feelings and ideas on what to do. You will gradually weed out folks along the way and hopefully identify people who you will invite for a “break” – meaning to break bread together socially and to break a sweat together working on a project. These steps will reveal a lot about their thought process, interpersonal skills, and willingness/ability to work.
You can find much more in my book “Thriving in Times of Chaos” available on Amazon. It provides time-phased actions to become more sustainable in any location along with links to additional information and useful products. A more complete description of the book along with a PDF version are available on my website.
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