You Know You're A Prepper

You have a cookbook all about Spam.

Your dog has more Emergency Rations than 95% of the U.S. population.

The local supermarket manager knows to go ahead and open up the back dock doors when he sees you on a shopping trip.

Your home and property are more secure and better lit than Fort Knox or Area 51.

All the local restaurants know to save you all their 5-gallon buckets on Mondays and Thursdays.

You welcome a “mild” El Nino storm because you know its going to fill your cistern.

When people ask about all those colorful maps on your walls, you tell them that you are planning a “Fishing Expedition”.

You can recognize the sound of a generator from four blocks away, but you also can tell the brand, horsepower and kilowatts per hour that it is putting out.

You stock up on kerosene and firewood in 102 degree summer heat.

Your scanner includes the frequencies of every law enforcement agency within 100 miles, including the ones that don’t officially exist.

Those maps on your wall have every bridge marked in red, with an alternate path marked around it.

You have a key fob that says, “What Would John Wayne Do?”

You can’t put your groceries in the trunk of the car because its already jammed full with emergency kits, first aid supplies, and fully-stocked BOBs.

You know the news three days before it hits the mass media.

You have back-up plans for your back-up plans.

You’ve ever bought antibiotics for human use through a vet or grains for human consumption through a feed store.

You’ve got more than one grain mill.

You’ve ever wondered how you might filter the used water from your washing machine to make it fit for human consumption.

You have a kerosene lamp in every room.

Your living room coffee table is actually a board with pretty cloth over it to disguise your food storage underneath.
Your box springs are Rubber Maid containers filled with rice and beans.

You save dryer lint to make fire starters.

You know the shelf life of tuna fish, but don’t know how long you’ve had that open jar of mayo in the fridge.

Your basement walls are insulated with crates of toilet paper, from floor to ceiling, all the way around.

Other people are saving money for new furniture or vacations, but you are desperately saving to get solar panels put on your house.

You were excited beyond all reason when they came out with cheddar cheese in a can.

You can engage in a spirited debate on chemical vs. sawdust toilets for hours on end.

You’ve ever considered buying an above-ground pool for water storage purposes.

You know what things like ‘TSHTF’, ‘BOB’, ‘GOOD’, and ‘TEOTWAWKI’ mean and routinely use them in conversations.

You have different grades of BOB’s. And re-stock them twice a year.


You know the names, family histories, locations, and degree of readiness of over a thousand fellow doomers on the internet, but you’ve never met your neighbors.

The best radio in the house is a wind-up.

You have better items in storage than you use everyday.

If the SHTF, you would eat better than you eat now.

Your significant other gave you a sleeping bag rated at -15 degrees for Christmas, and you were moved beyond words.

You’ve sewn secret mini-BOBs into the bottom of your children’s school backpacks.

Local food pantries have come to depend on donations from your larder when you rotate stock in the spring and fall.

You have enough army surplus equipment to open a store.

The local army surplus store owner knows you by your first name.

When you fill up when your gas tank, it’s already 3/4 full.

You call Rubber Maid for wholesale prices.

You have several cases of baby wipes and your kids are all grown.

You start panicking when you are down to 50 rolls of toilet paper.

You keep a small notebook to write down any edible plants you happen to see along the road.

You shop yard sales, store sales, and markdown racks for bartering goods .

You own a hand-operated clothes washer and a non-electric carpet sweeper.

You have at least two of every size of Dutch oven (the ones with the legs on the bottom), and 20 bags of charcoal, although you have a gas grill.

You have rain barrels at each corner of your house although you have a city water hookup, and a Big Berkey to purify the water.

You have sapphire lights, survival whistle, and a Swiss Army knife on every family member’s keychain.

The people in line at Costco ask if you run a store or restaurant.

You require a shovel to rotate all your preps properly.

You no longer go to the doctor’s because you can either fix it yourself, make it at home, or know and understand the physicians desk reference better than he does, and can get the goods at the vets or pet store for MUCH less money anyway.

You know that GPS has nothing to do with the economy.

You track your preps on a computer spreadsheet for easy reordering, but have hard copies in a 3-ring binder, ‘just in case’.

You’ve thought about where the hordes can be stopped before entering town.

You start evaluating people according to ‘skill sets’.

You view the nearest conservation area as a potential grocery store if TSHTF.

You have enough pasta stockpiled in your basement to carbo-load all the runners in the New York marathon.

You know that you have 36 gallons of extra drinking water in the hot water tank and your 2 toilet tanks.

You know which bugs are edible.

You have a hand pump on your well.

You have #10 cans of ‘stuff’ that the labels fell off of, but you won’t throw it out or open it because it, ‘may be needed later’, even though you haven’t a clue as to the contents.


You’ve numbered the deer romping in the yard by their order of consumption.


You must move 50 cases of food for the plumber to get to that leaky pipe, and you have your own hand truck in the basement to do it.


You own more pairs of hiking boots than casual and dress shoes combined.


You have more 55 gallon blue water drums than family members.

You have a backup generator for your backup generator, which is a backup for your solar energy system.

You go to McDonalds and ask for one order of fries with 25 packs of ketchup and mustard.

You have ever given SPAM as a serious gift.

You’ve made bug-out cargo packs for your dogs.

You’re on your fifth vacuum sealer, but you keep at least one of the worn out ones because you can still seal up plastic bags with it.

You haven’t bought dried fruit in years, but you buy fresh bananas, apples, peaches and pears by the case and have three dehydrators.


You have duplicates of all your electronics gear, solar panels and generator parts in your EMP-shielded fallout shelter.

You have set aside space for your live chickens in the fallout shelter.

When the power goes out in your neighborhood, all the neighbor’s kids come over to your place to watch TV on generator power.

You must open the door to your pantry very carefully for fear of a canned goods avalanche.

You’ve learned to make twine from plant fibers to be used for snares because you fear that all of your preps and hard work will be confiscated by FEMA troops or destroyed by earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear blasts, ravening hordes of feral sheeple or reptiloids from ‘Planet X’

 

I resent This!!! Cuz i HAVE met my Neighbors!!! An they are dumbasses!!

 

If you ever had to move, it would take at least one 52' tractor trailer for you food, probably two because of the weight, 52000 lbs/truck or so. Make that three for four.

Just a U-haul for your furniture.

Hmm, I resemble that remark.

 

Yup, that's about right....I hate to say it, but maybe I can find another nut job like me someday to help load amd move it all!

 

Some more I found, but still are true:

You choose your home based on "ease of defense".

Your kids would never dream of throwing away a 2 liter pop bottle because you save them and fill them with drinking water.

You know precisely how long your stored food would last for your family because your spreadsheet tells you this.

You can quickly calculate how many servings of milk can be made from the econo size bag of dry milk.

You have the ability to make a loaf of bread from scratch on a charcoal barbecue.

Some from our local group:

You have "Survival Food Sundays" every two weeks where you cook only from your preps using no house power or municipal water.

You have a group of friends who get together and practice fire and move drills, military hand signs, and comm protocols.

You have more prepping books than fiction books on your bookshelves.

You plan your property improvements based on productivity of food and storage.

You are at the store for a gallon of milk and buy 30 pounds of beans and rice because you can.

You buy rubbermaid storage bins for your canned goods and have a specific type of canned good in each - peas, corn, etc. - and every one is full to capacity.

You and your spouse specifically agreed to by X$ of preps every time you go to the store.

You shop Ebay and use Freecycle for barter goods.

You can kill an animal and waste none of it, even tanning the hides.

You have a stockpile of red devil lye to make soap with post SHTF.

You have enough grains and powdered milk stored to feed an Ethiopian village for 5 years.

You buy two of everything because "two is one and one is none".

Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

 

"X", you have just got to quit telling everything you know about people-lol.

 

Two Words "Defensive Landscaping!!!!"

 

You are lucky mine are helpless dumbasses.

 

You know you are a prepper when:
You buy land that is in the middle of nowhere, 60 miles from what is referred to as a city, and don't mind the isolation, the lack of a convenience store, or anything else, save the mountains, trees, and rocks.
The first thing you do when you set foot on the land is to grab a handful of the soil squeeze it and smell it. Will it support a garden and/or an orchard? Then you look at the immediate and then the distant surrounding areas. Neighbors? Distance? What has to be considered as far as light and sound policy?
You measure in your mind's eye where you'll put in your "pinch" or "choke" points, where you can build a defendable site, where you can immediately move (ONLY if necessary) to safe cover.
Look for windbreaks and most important of all of this is WATER.
Where is it? Can you get to it? Can you keep it "concealed"? Is it fresh and clean? Is it an abundant source?
Yeah, you have to look at land differently than when you are shopping for a home in a city!
Ok, It's weird, but,... it's true!
I have done it 3 times now.
I have also gone to other people's choices that decided to buy land as they had close neighbor's....not what I considered to be a great choice!
Maybe I'm just being anti-social?
I have no one near me, for over 2 miles, in any direction.
I like that!

 

After reading the list, I can declare I am a prepper!

This is an issue that I need to address. I need to scale back on my mobile emergency supplies.

LOL! after reading this I no longer feel like a nut when I consider stuff like this and try to figure out if I can....

 

And yes, you can filter "grey water", it just takes work and a catchment system.

 

It is scary how many of those I actually do/have done/plan to do/need to do/thought of doing. As soon as I can get the tire on the fork lift fixed, I can tell you how many pallets of ammo I actually have.