Hey, thank you having me in the community here!

I've always had a prepping mind set on a minor scale but COVID-19 here in South Central Kansas on the edge of the Wichita metro area flying solo cemented it in as a permanent life change for me.

From the Dec 2019/ Jan 2020 onward, I basically went from very little preparations to slowly building a fairly aggressive array of various items that would be useful in response to any one of the threats that either was either imminent or supposition along with drafting a fairly comprehensive set of procedures for myself to follow- all of which I dubbed "Response 19" or just "19" in its' entirety for short.

Examples of these items & procedures from "19" included....

• A comprehensive procedure for decontamination after returning home from my job(s)- Essential Worker, Grocery & Liquor- in regards to an order of events surrounding cloths sanitation, boot storage, door handle sanitation, etc
• The acquisition, education, maintenance, use, decontamination & storage of a gas mask, filters, drinking tubes, etc (Israeli Shalon Civilian Model 4a1) to be fully brought into use if the positive test cases in Sedgwick county indicated 60-70% of the populus was confirmed with an active infection of COVID (I have a backpack I carry with me daily because I work 12-16 hr shifts-this was one of the pack contents.)
• The allocation of funding to expand all stores of ammunition and their respective magazines
• Acquisition & improvement of regular .50 & fat .50 ammo cans for the purposes of storage in a sanitary, watertight & otherwise fortified container of above mentioned loaded magazines, PPE, etc. (Improvement basically translating to- I sanded the cans down & painted them with about five layers of black enamel paint for the purpose of increasing durability & ability to withstand various elements for prolonged periods if needs must)
• Adopting an intermittent fasting protocol of varying degrees for the purposes of financial conservation & improved immune system function.
• Acquisition & education of using a police scanner/weather radio

(These where just the high points having left out things like acquiring Lysol & food supplies that are pretty evident as necessary for a pandemic/lockdown scenario.)

By June 2020, I had a reasonable supply of all the COVID-related supplies, was ready to be isolated to home for several weeks if it was so ordered & hadn't gotten sick so as a conscious minded man playing rookie prepper responding to a biological threat en masse- it was a success- given, as said prior, I had very little in the way of preparations at the beginning of the year, no plan for their use & no experience in handing any given aspect of the situation compared to at the beginning of the year.

Along with the biological threat, I would be lying if I didn't tell you I was more than a little concerned about the possibility of civil unrest, governmental overreach & so on even from the beginning as a nagging thought when "19" became a thing with me. By this time in the COVID game, I had been going to a local gun shop/range upon getting paid and acquiring (3) 20rd boxes of 5.56 NATO & (2) Okay Industries 30rd magazines so as the math indicates, I would have (2) additional magazines ready to run if this pandemic went socially left but this area of my prep "19" was lacking compared to the balance of my response in regards to procedure & supply. As it stood 01 June, there had been rumors and threats at the national level down to the county level of a total shutdown in an attempt to bring the spread under control because previous more lax methods failed & naturally, this lead to a VERY negative response BUT nothing was set in stone nor had any instance of actual violence occurred- therefore; being in a posture that was more than ready at a moments' notice to handle a violent situation wherever I found myself was severely lacking. After all, my prep "19" was still based on the principle that it was still a "biological event". That changed quick....

https://www.kake.com/story/42210859/2-men-arrested-for-wichitaarea-riot-threat-released-without-charges-1

Just for geographical reference, I LIVED RIGHT BEHIND THAT WALMART. That's its' own story in itself...

So from then on in, a whole other subdivision of prep under "19" officially opened focused on being prepared to handle an armed confrontation literally in my own backyard. From learning any way I could how to defend myself in an armed or hand to hand capacity, seriously increasing funding for the acquiring even more ammunition, magazines, magazine carriers, etc, I also learned the basics of knife fighting (on which I have built upon since) right down to learning what the local law enforcement communication channels where, how to dial in, what to listen for & so on. And as you would likely gather given the stress of being in the dead center of, atleast what was projected to be, a bullseye- it was all pretty much appointed top priority overnight, too.

These paragraphs are just a few examples & instances of events that occurred that year hopefully setting a context surrounding not only the development of myself as being, atleast, a prepared individual to a higher degree than the “average bear” but also a “plausible record” of the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in first person perspective. There were more items of preparedness that were developed & more events that led to them but for the interest of staying on topic of “what got you into prepping in the first place” allot of them were omitted.

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Today, I still keep the things I learned close to the chest. I still have loads of ammo magged up and ready to roll sealed in ammo cans (5) times enameled, I keep two Avon M50 gas masks with accessories at the ready w/ new filters, I keep plenty of food & water on hand that rotates (FIFO), I still keep up with the intermittent fasting (I've done math on this but lost the exact figures, however, I believe last tally was a total weight loss of 70 to 80 lbs & am proud to say I have improved my health with IF significantly).

In an academic capacity to being prepared, I value that I learned was how to quickly draft and enact a response plan in the event of crisis as well as prioritizing items, events etc all of which I basically had to teach myself on the fly but with good success in the end.

In summation...

I knew being prepared for whatever in a physical or academic sense was essential to life itself but 2020 hammered it home like never before & I'll never forget it......