This Is Why We Prep
Better to be prepared for the wrong thing than left unprepared for the unexpected.
Panic began to creep in last week as railroad workers in the United States verged on a strike. Needless to say, if the rail workers do strike, it will be a disaster for our already fragile supply chain.
Behind the scenes, people were asking me how to prepare.
It makes me sad when I get these questions because you won’t like the answer: if you’re not already prepared, it’s too late. If you wait until just before or after a happening, you’re not preparing, you’re reacting. You might get lucky and react before the masses figure out what’s going on—I admittedly did this at the start of COVID—but you’re still behind the curve.
And even then, what could I really tell you? If you need something, buy it. I’ve given that advice before, but how sustainable is that? Should we just go out and run up the credit card every time some disaster might happen? Then you can’t pay your bills, fall behind on your mortgage, and lose your house because you weren’t looking at the full picture.
As for my family and many of us on the Unprepared Discord, we weren’t all that worried, because we’re prepared to some degree. The main thing we’ve had in mind this year is the war in Ukraine and how its various aftershocks will affect the food supply. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won’t, but we’re ready in case whatever eventuality makes it tougher to find food on the shelf.
This is why it’s so important to make the bulk of your preps multi-purpose. You always need food and water. Even the folks who stockpiled for Y2K ate the food and drank the water eventually. That’s also why I prefer shelf-stable pantry preps over designer disaster food. We have 200 pounds of rice. We will eat it all… eventually. In any case, we have calories for the winter.
Some of my family members have already been buying Christmas presents for the kids because they’re worried about the supply chain and possible rail strike. It’s not the worst idea, but inflation making budgets tighter and tighter means having to draw a clearer line between wants and needs. My kids might want some random toy, but they have enough of those. What they need is to go to bed with a full belly at night.
Unfortunately, we’re not out of the woods just yet. Again, that deal with the rail workers is tentative and all the unions have to vote on it. If just one union rejects the deal, the strike is on. And there is a good chance that happens when they vote Thursday morning. So things might get bumpy very soon. Are you unprepared?