The Payoff for Prepping

So what? Who cares about being prepared? This is entirely subjective, of course, but I personally believe that a great many people would simply prefer to not think about bad things that honestly probably won’t happen. Spending your days worried about pandemic or zombies, or asteroids, or even catalytic converter theft is not a good way to live. It is isn’t healthy, and it isn’t even productive, in my opinion.

For me, the “pay off” is the little things. I absolutely love being a stronger part of my community. I love being the sort of family that people in my neighborhood call if something goes wrong, or they need to borrow a tool. If the neighbor kid needs her basketball pumped up, I am proud to be the person to answer the door and help. I have great pride in the number of times I have pulled over to help a stranded motorist. Or jump start that old car in the back of the WalMart parking lot. Or had some blister tape in my pack on that little day hike.

Sure, the big wins feel even better. Having invested the money and time to actually get Solar and Powerwalls installed before PGE’s latest calamity. Having spare blankets in the car because we were stuck on Donner Summit in a blizzard trying to go skiing. Having thought ahead to repair the well at our house BEFORE it broke. Having spent the money and time to trim those trees so they don’t fall on our car.

But the pay off is in the little things. And usually, the people that benefit are hopefully your family. I feel like as a dad and husband (my favorite jobs) it is my duty to do my best to keep my family safe, and comfortable. And being prepared (and teaching preparedness) is an excellent way to do that.

I hope as you read some of the topics and my thoughts on this page, you come away with an idea of what being prepared might mean for you. Maybe it means more sleep my dealing with a midnight bloody nose better. Maybe it means being able to help your elderly neighbor out during a power outage. Maybe it means moving to Montana and living in a converted missile silo (invite me!). That is something only you can decide.

I will leave you with a couple of stories for my prepper payoff, however.

My Friend Justin

I have told this story before, but I am typing it here, because it made me very happy. I am one of those people who believes that in a disaster people need to come together and help each other. I don’t subscribe to the lone wolf “man against the world in the apocalypse” stuff. I think most people who think that way lead lives they wish they didn’t now, and would love a way out. I personally love my life, the family I have, and the lifestyle I have. I’d sure prefer to keep it, but if I can’t (because… disaster), then I’d like to do what I can now to prepare for such an outcome.

Anyway, as a part of this, I am constantly trying to recruit other people to prepare. Not commune, off grid bugout location stuff, just the basics. Extra food, water, whatever. Maybe taking a CERT class or something. And the thing that always made me sad was that basically all of the folks I talked to said something like “Ha! I am coming to YOUR house in an earthquake!” and then did nothing to prepare themselves. Look, if you are my neighbor, I want to help you. But you need to help yourself a little, especially if I have given you fair warning. The power would go out, and my neighbors would have no flashlights. Or batteries. Or anything. So I would go house to house and hand out lights and check on them. And then none of them would ever seem to actually do anything to prepare on their own. Until my friend Justin.

Justin is a friend I inherited because his wife is friends with my wife (I adore both of them). He is a kind, serious, and loving family man, and very, very capable. They have two kids, and they were at our house and for some reason the topic of being prepared came up. I thought about how to explain to Justin how I thought about it, and I decided to use the fact that he had just bought a new (very nice) car, which was parked in my driveway. I asked him how much a year he paid for insurance on his new (again, very nice) car. He said about 2500 bucks maybe? Then I asked him “which do you think is more likely… you will crash that car or there will be an earthquake in the Bay Area in the next 12 months”. He laughed and said “of course the earthquake… you could crash that car if you tried… it has all kinds of safety stuff”. To which I replied “So you don’t think spending the same amount of money insuring your family against a disaster you actually BELIEVE is coming would make sense?”

Obviously he didn’t commit to anything, and I heard nothing more of it. But in the early days of the Pandemic (in CA, the early days were scary, because COVID got to San Francisco first, and we locked down HARD, so it really was pretty scary for a time), Justin called me to thank me. He said “I listened to you, and went home and bought 2500 bucks worth of freeze dried food, first aid kits, including a gunshot wound kit, and a bunch of other stuff. I haven’t really needed much of it, but it made me feel a lot better knowing that we could truly isolate for weeks if needed, and I would be able to feed my kids.”

That made my whole month.