Recent conversation worth sharing:
“We've been doing preparedness for a very long time. Our goal has been to be able to survive in the 1880's. We chose this time period because there was no electric but also there was beginning to be some decent level of scientific knowledge regarding medicine and disease. The knowledge should still be available to us, if we plan for it.
Entropy is real. Planning around electricity is fine for the short term. We lose power all the time around here, sometimes, in the past, for a week or longer, usually when St. Louis gets hit hard. We are way at the bottom of the power restoration list in that case. So, generators are good to have. They are not a long term solution, though. Eventually the fuel runs out, the solar panels decay, the batteries wear out and the electricity goes away.
Plan your preparations around life without electricity. That should influence all that you do as you work towards preparedness. Having off grid servers to store info is great, until the electric goes way. The solution? Buy books. Power tools won't work. Get tools that don't need power and learn to use them. Water systems, whether well pump or municipal, will stop. Learn to collect water and have the containers you need to do so. In our case, we also put a hand pump on the well. It doesn't move a lot of water because of the depth it's working at, but it'll keep us alive. Build highly productive gardens that can be worked by hand and learn to make them produce. Refrigeration will be a thing of the past. Learn the old ways to preserve your harvest.
I can go on and on. The picture I've attached is a photo of one of our many "servers". This collection of books is mostly related to gardening and herbal medicine. We have a complete library that we've collected, mostly on the cheap, that covers pleasure reading, schooling for kids, math, history, theology and more. Losing electric doesn't change their availability at all.
Small things also need to be thought of, things like passing the time. Do you have a bunch of board games? Maybe decks of cards with a copy of Hoyle's to teach the many games that can be played with them?
We've been fortunate that we've spent years doing this. That made doing it cheaply possible, or at least we were able to spread the cost. If you plan to be prepared make it a part of your life, integrate it into your day to day world. When you see canned vegetables on a deep discount, buy a bunch of them. It helps you to prepare but it also helps you to live cheaply. We're always looking for the sales at the grocery store. If you need to buy something you use all the time, buy more of it and put it on the shelf. Nothing gets cheaper so you'll save money that way, too.
Real preparedness is a lifestyle choice, not a hobby. It's a lot of fun, too. We're always learning.”
