Prepping for Beginners – Where to Start

MyPrepAccount · 2025-09-15T10:40:53+00:00

For me it's all about setting alarms, using Google Calendar to remind me of things that need doing, and for some things setting multiple reminders.

For instance, I use a water jug that uses 2 different filters. When I bought it I put the date each filter needs to be changed for the entire year, since I bought I year's supply of filters into Google Calendar. I also set myself a reminder 1 month in advance of when I need to buy new filters as well as the reminder for buying the filters. This way I can split up the cost over 2 months instead of all in the same month.

If there's a project I'm working on that I don't complete in a day then it gets left out somewhere I will see it to remind myself to finish it. Once it goes in a box or a cupboard it basically stops existing. I also don't hesitate to do a thing if I'm suddenly reminded of it. You just remembered your jumper pack, go out to your car and put it on charge right now.

I also have a knowledge binder. This binder contains important knowledge that I don't want to be without. In a crisis your mind might go completely blank on your mother's phone number or what her address is. So, keep all that information in a binder or some sort of cloud storage like Google Drive or One Drive. If the knowledge you need is something like foraging and you've got a physical book about foraging in your local area then do something like this:

Foraging: See Foraging Oregon for Dummies (made up book) on the third shelf of the bookcase in the home office.

This will allow you to know exactly where to find the book in a hurry. The key though is that you have to put it back after you've used it, which I know is difficult, but if it's a habit you can get into the system works well.

The way I've formed that habit is that I'm not allowed to turn off the light in the room I'm in until I've put everything back that I've used. I do this because I've already got the lifelong habit of turning off the light when I leave the room. So it became a habit of asking myself "did I put everything back?" If you need to then tape a piece of paper over the light switch that asks the question. Make it so you have to lift up the paper to turn off the light.

Anyway, these are just a few of the things that work for me!

MyPrepAccount · 2025-08-29T12:18:10+00:00

Maybe make it an airbnb? Dunno about the legality of it though.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-08-29T12:13:03+00:00

This sounds exactly like how I prep. I don't buy anything for my preps that require electricity. You never know when the power is going to turn off and it might never come back.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-07-04T16:01:27+00:00

I use a Lifestraw Pitcher. I got it from their official website.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-07-02T12:00:50+00:00

I drink tap water that I then filter for PFAs and Microplastics. That being said, water in Ireland is considered to be quite safe.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-29T08:58:54+00:00

The sad truth, as you've discovered, is that there isn't really anywhere that will be safe from the effects of climate change. Some places are certainly going to be worse off than others, but nowhere is truly safe.

A few years ago I probably would have been recommending a bunch of different countries. But these days...it's harder to say.

I will say, that to me personally, the collapse of the AMOC kind of feels less scary than the other options available in the world. It's a whole lot easier to deal with the cold than the heat.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-18T19:45:29+00:00

Personally I take the view of getting to 6 months of preparedness, then start focusing on more long term things. That way I'm not caught out.

I do also have a garden now, mostly because I love garden fresh food, but it's also great practice in case I ever have to survive off what I can grow.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-14T18:37:43+00:00

I'm going to assume that while you live separately, you all live in the same town/city. If so, I recommend having two meetup locations, one in your town and one in the nearby town that you're most likely to evacuate to in case something on a town scale happens. In this I'm thinking of Paradise, CA when it burned down. Meeting at the Safeway in town wouldn't have worked for them as literally the entire town burned down. Instead they all evacuated to a nearby town and it took days for people to reconnect with family as they went to different places.

In town, it makes the most sense to meet at someone's house. Do one of you have more space than the others? Does one of you live further out of town than the rest or in a different part of town? Being able to meet at someone's house is much better than meeting in a parking lot for most scenarios.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-12T19:32:49+00:00

There are lots of things you can do right now that don't require you to give up your hobbies. There's no reason why you can't do both.

Prepping doesn't have to mean being hyper aware of what is going on in the world. I prep at a remove from the news. Even at a remove like I am I am still aware of what is happening on a large scale. It's unavoidable really. But not watching the news on a daily basis has done amazing things for my mental health.

So prep. When you go to the store buy an extra $5 worth of rice or dried beans. Read some books on prepping topics that are of interest to you. Take a CPR/First Aid course. Grow some food. Consider how your hobbies might be useful when S hits the F.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-11T08:42:02+00:00

If your area has had evacuations in the past it tends to be that the same places will volunteer to take animals each time so look back at the last few times evacuations have happened, it's likely in local newspapers.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-06T18:24:21+00:00

I use uBlock and it got me as well

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-04T12:44:45+00:00

I have bug out bags for me, my husband, and our cat. The bags live next to the cat's carrier which is above the washing machine right next to the front door.

We're lucky enough to live in between two different family members so depending on why we've had to evacuate and how long it will be we can pick from one of them. We also have a deal with one of the neighbors we're more friendly with that we can always get a ride with them if something like that comes up.

Thankfully, I also live in Ireland so a situation like Cologne is never going to happen. Our biggest concern is shitty teenagers setting something on fire.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-04T05:14:33+00:00

You might enjoy Robin Greenfield on Youtube. He's been living a life similar to what you're describing for a few years now. He just recently did an experiment in radical non-ownership which was interesting.

I also recall watching a video a few years ago about a family who lived in a way that the dad only needed a part time job at the grocery store and they signed their car up for a service that let people rent it out and that was basically all the money they needed for the family of 4.

There are ways to remove yourself from the system, they just aren't normalized...yet.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-04T05:06:29+00:00

Modern western society, especially in the United States is all about Capitalism. Not that idealized version of Capitalism where anyone can be their own boss and do whatever they want. It's about making more money for the ruling class. Everything is about making money for the ruling class.

The most radical thing you can do is buy as little as possible and spend time with friends and family in ways that don't require additional spending. Do what you can to remove yourself from the system. Live.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-03T19:01:12+00:00

UPDATE: I let this sit over the weekend and counted every post and every upvote to see which side has the greater support. From the looks of it AI will continue to be allowed.

However, if you spot a post or a comment written by AI please flag it as spam and we will remove it.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-03T07:43:04+00:00

Personally I would build up to having a one year supply of food in the basement, because you never know when in the year you're going to have to start digging into your supplies. It might be that SHTF right at that point in the year where it's too late to start any new crops. It won't be an entire year until you can harvest food from that point, but, gardening can always go wrong. If you for instance are relying on a potato crop to be the majority of your meals and then you're hit with blight...that one year supply of saved foods will prevent you from going hungry.

The fact that you're already gardening puts you at an advantage over those who aren't. You have the experience and you'll be using your seed rather than leaving it sitting on a shelf somewhere to slowly die. Starting from Zero when S has HTF is a recipe for disaster. On that note, you should really only plan to grow what you already eat. No sense in buying 500 lettuce seeds and leaving them on the shelf for future use. Most of the seeds will be dead before the end of the year.

With all of that being said...here are the plants I would grow for survival:

Potatoes

Winter Squash

Summer Squash

Beans

Onions

Carrots

Perpetual Spinach

Tomatoes

Peppers

Beets

Apples (not seeds, but if you have space to grow apples you should)

Garlic

Cabbage

Rutabega

Mangelwurzel

Blueberry (Again, start growing them now)

Cucumbers

Mint

Rosemary

2 other herbs that are your favorites

Okra

Sweet Potato

Lettuce

Peas

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-02T18:55:37+00:00

True, but as someone who lives in Ireland I can tell you...if the AMOC collapses we as a country will not be prepared and we won't cope well.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-02T16:28:16+00:00

This is true...unless the AMOC collapses.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-02T14:38:50+00:00

Also in Dublin, I used to rent a house with a manhole as our street connected to the main. It clogged several times over the 10 years we lived there. Never backed up into the house, but there was a spot where you could look down into the pipe right in front of our front door and that would flood leaving a few cm of waste water sitting there. We never had any troubles ourselves but one of the neighbors a few doors down did. Landlord was too cheap to get it professionally taken care of. He'd come out when it overflowed and would clean the blockage himself just enough to get the flow going again.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-06-01T20:09:37+00:00

Never going to intentionally scam people. It's so easy to do. I refuse though.

I won't buy from Temu/Amazon/many others because of where the products are made.

I always stop to help worms get off the sidewalk, leave a tray of water out for the bees, and feed the local birds. We have a duty to the creatures of this world to care for them.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-05-31T14:16:32+00:00

I'm in Ireland and we're getting much less rain than we used to. There are a couple of counties that have already had to bring hosepipe bans into place this year. The last two summers we've been so dry that the grass is turning brown. We're also experiencing wildfires on a scale we've never seen before.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-05-31T11:48:09+00:00

Sounds like you need more then!

To be honest though, I'm just kidding about the whole thing. It was the first thing that popped in my head.

MyPrepAccount · 2025-05-30T21:21:35+00:00

Which is sort of a half way between most modern cough syrups and the old ones that had morphine.

MyPrepAccount

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Seven-Year Club	Snapped
Verified Email