National Preparedness Month Day 29--Prepper Precautions

Now that you have a good base for your prepping efforts, here are some precautionary things to consider:

• Don't spend all of your time prepping.  You have a life to live, your family has family stuff to do, so prepping shouldn't take over your life.  A few minutes a day with the occasional full day class or weekend backpacking trips should take care of your prepping needs.  When you are shopping, grab a few more items for your food stockpile.  When you are shopping online and see a great deal on prepper gear, snag it.  When you are having dinner, play "what would you do" in various emergency situations with the family.  This will spur discussion, take care of some preparedness training, and be accomplished without taking time out of your day.
• Don't spend all of your money on prepping.  Again, you have a life to live and little Jimmy shouldn't have to skip sports because you would rather buy a new gun for your prepper stocks.  Your money should be budgeted for all facets of your life--current needs, food stockpile, emergency fund, etc--and not just thrown at everything prepping.
• Keep your prepping on the down low.  There is no reason for everyone at work to know you have a massive armory in your basement or for your kid's schoolmates to know you have piles of gold in a safe at home.  The more people who know you have a massive stockpile of food/money/gear/guns/etc, the bigger target for theft, robbery, or worse you and your family will become.
• Don't be a prepping evangelist.  Preppers get kind of a bad rap because the only ones you really hear about in the news are the unhinged sort who may be a bit crazy to start with.  Add a couple of crazy or violent acts and all the sudden ALL preppers look like a threat to the "normal" community.  Of course if you are at a family dinner you can mention to your elderly aunt that a major snow storm is on its way and offer to split and stack some firewood for her.  You can blend into the "normal" community by having interesting hobbies (hunting, HAM radio) and by being useful (as a volunteer EMT).  However stark raving preppers tend to scare people.
• Stay within the law.  Know the laws as far as firearms (personal protection, concealed carry, where you can carry, etc), preventing trespassers on your property (even though you know how to rig some pretty cool booby traps, you can't really set traps that would maim or kill people as the legal system frowns on this), HAM radio (you can't broadcast without a license), making defensive IEDs (thoroughly illegal), etc.
• Rotate and review your stocks regularly.  If a disaster strikes 20 years from now, you don't want to be forced to eat food you stockpiled today.  You don't want to NEED a flashlight and find that the batteries had long ago corroded and ruined the entire device.  You don't want to grab your BOB and end up with only a size 42 pants to wear on your now physically fit 32 inch body.  Regularly checking and rotating your stocks and gear prevents these issues.

Should You Broadcast Your Penchant for Prepping?

There are people on both sides of this issue.  In one camp you have the die-hard preppers who will talk about the subject to any and all who will listen.  They will gladly show you their year's supply of food and break out their cache of weapons at the drop of a hat (much to the shock/dismay/glee of the people watching) while on the other side are the preppers who look like, well, someone so average you would probably overlook them unless you needed a good accountant (yet they too have a well-stocked, well-hidden supply of survival supplies that would make REI look like a corner store).
Deciding whether or not to talk about prepping for a disaster/zombie apocalypse/TEOTWAWKI is a personal decision.  I can understand how some people are so intently focused on the topic that they can't help but talk about it (along with liberal doses of show and tell).  These same people are also usually interested in sharing their knowledge so that others will benefit and do their best to encourage others to prepare so that they will be ready in the event of a disaster.
I, on the other hand, am just the opposite.  Besides sharing information in a relatively private way on this blog, there is no way that someone will notice that I am prepared as well as I am unless they take a full inventory of the things I do (nearly impossible although a few people have noted that I have an odd collection of hobbies and others have wondered what exactly I do for a living...to which they don't receive a reply).  The reasons that I believe people should keep their prepping under wraps are numerous and include:

• You don't want your neighbors/your family/the government to be concerned about your collection of weapons and ammo.
• You don't want thieves to know that you could rival Costco in the amount of survival/preparedness supplies/food you have on hand (it makes you a fairly large target for burglary/robbery).
• You don't want people to think that they don't need to prepare since their brother/neighbor/best friend just happens to be extraordinarily prepared and supplied so their bug out plan is to wind up on your door step.
• You don't want to be taken advantage of whether in good times or bad.
• You don't want "your business" broadcast far and wide (I learned this from my grandfather who was quite private and rarely told anyone more than his name).
• You don't want to become a target after the fact (when people are desperate, even knowing about a friend of a friend of a friend who has food/water/medical skills/etc will cause people to seek you out, and not in a good way).
• You don't want to be labeled (unfortunately a few people who were termed "survivalist" have made the evening news--again, not in a good way--and this tends to paint all people concerned with preparedness as everything from a bit off to certifiably insane). 

So while the choice is yours, when discussing your prepping plans, consider what the long term effects of these discussions may be.