So two people figured that they had maxed out their preparedness level, according to the last poll I posted. Interesting. The majority of respondents put themselves at a very middle-of-the-road five. A couple people threw in a zero. As I said, I figure I’m about a seven.
It’s a little misleading though…we don’t have a standardized benchmark for what constitutes readiness. You may think a years worth of food is your goal, and someone elses goal would be six months. But..it’s not a competition..the only person whose opinion really matters on this sort of thing is your own. I suspect the perfect level of preparedness is like achieving the speed of light – you can get to 99.999999999999% there but you’ll never get to that 100%.
Biggest bottlenecks? Again, it differs from person to person. My experience in talking with other survivalists is that there are really usually only three things that hold them back:
- Money
- Family
- Job
Money is the one that holds me back. If I could shake loose an extra couple thousand bucks a month I’d get a lot off stuff crossed of my list. But…it’s hard to make that kinda money out here in the flyover states. I already exist on a pretty tight budget, and while my income is definitely going up it’s still well below the national average.
Many, many people I talk to say that their big bottleneck is family. Why are you still living in San Francisco, I ask? “Oh, I want to move to Wyoming but my wife doesn’t want to leave because the grandkids are here”….I’ve heard that one a bunch. Or they feel they have to be near an elderly relative. Or the kids are in school for another X amount of years. So, they do the best they can where they are.
Finally, the job angle. This is the same as the family angle except the focus is the career rather than the family. It’s hard to walk away from being a gas/oil lease attorney in Houston making a zillion bucks a year and become a small-town lawyer in Thermopolis or Pahrump doing water-rights law for inbred farm communities.
On the other hand, I have met survivalists who conquered this sort of thing in the simplest and most arduous way possible – they took a deep breath and jumped into a 3-5 year plan of working their asses off in big cities like Chicago, LA, or New York, saved every dime they could, put together a nest egg that would let them live elsewhere, and then took the money and ran.
He’s dead now, so I can talk about him….I used to know a machinist down the valley here. He came out in the 70’s fell in love with Montana and knew this was his future. He went back to his aerospace job in California and worked like a dog for four years until he had enough money to bail. He came out here, bought about 60 or so acres, built his house and machine shop, and moved out here for good. He brought enough money from his California indenture to pay for the land up front, build his place, set it up, and have some money in the bank to cover him while he got his new machining gig set up. Being a gunnie at heart, he wound up selling a chunk of the property to create the local shooting range. So..you guys who go shooting in Hamilton at the Whittecar range, your local friendly neighborhood survivalist sold ’em that property.
Much more rarely I’ll meet people who simply had some sort of moment where they just packed it up and moved with a lot less planning than that. Someone has a really bad day at the cube farm, gets stuck in traffic on the way home, comes home to find neighborhoodlums on the lawn, gets woken up by sirens and urban noise, and says “Screw this, lets sell this place and move to Idaho”. Which, actually, often works better than you think since the house you sell in LA or Sacramento will fetch enough to buy you the same size house out here for about 1/2 the money….leaving you the other half to stake yourself.
As I said, my bottleneck is cash. But, Im lucky in that money is not finite. You can always get or make more. It’s time that becomes scarce. My math says I’ve only got maybe ten or fifteen productive years in front of me, so it’s balls to the wall in terms of trying to get money put away and stuff acquired.
What bout you, man? What’s keeping you from pegging the needle on the HowPreppedAmI-o-meter?
Mine is money, but the debt kind. We are working hard at getting rid of it. 2-3 years and we should have it whipped. We already have enough income for retirement from main stream society, but the debt needs to be gone. I figure that in an enviornment where there is little cash flow in the general population, debt free will be easier. And if I’m wrong….well that leaves more time/money for us to play on.
There will *never* be enough money. Never. There’s no ‘bunker’ in my future, and I’m fine with that. And in my mind, that limitation doesn’t prevent me from ever reaching “9” on your scale. Location alone can put you at ‘5’. Add a little weapons competency & deep food storage, and you arrive at “6”. Learn how to repair all your systems and you’re a “7”. Join or build a tribe & develop some medical skills & I’d say you’re now an “8”.
Stuff wise I ‘m pretty much a 9/10. Skills wise I need to up my game on medical, mechanical, (mostly bicycle maintenance and electrical in my case) cross country skiing, and gardening, so call it 6/10 on that front.
Mine has been land – I’ve been stuck in suburbia but have been saving like mad (no debt). I had to pay off the mortgage here first, get debt free, weather an economic downturn from 2013-2015, and operate in don’t spend just save mode for several years. However, I’ve finally reached the point where we are starting to look for a property and have the funds saved to make it happen by this summer.
Another bottleneck is age and/or physical disability. I can no longer chop wood – not even kindling – so we now depend mostly on the propane furnace. The plan is to get a generator so we can continue to use the furnace during power outages. Husband is old enough that I really don’t want him in the woods with a chain saw.
We have enough supplies to make it thru small local problems, but TEOTWAWKI? Not so much.
As a long time prepper I have encounter al of the above.
Money: small purchases add up over time, hobbies like camping, fishing and hunting will supply some of the gear.
Family: 12 years ago I purchased a bug out property/weekend retreat, looking ahead to retirement, all was well but then I remarried, my present wife developed health issues that required often doctor visits.
Job: I remain employed at the local County job, therefore I needed to stay put, I’m now retired and taugth my time has come.
Which brings me to another point.
Health: rural properties require a lot of hard work, when you are younger this does not seen to be an issue, but as we age it becomes obvious. I recently suffered an injury and lost half of my rigth foot and will be under medical care for a long time.Now I’m having doubts if my dream of relocating to my retreat will ever come to fruition .
Thank you for all the information that you provide on your blog.
Commander:
For me, money is SORT OF the problem.
There have been times I was ready to make a significant purchase, but my other half (who is usually pretty good about things like this) told me she has had plans for some of it…
In order to survive after “the fall of society” I have to survive my partners wrath!
Give and take…
Nothing held me back. I am infact in a gym working out In pahrump lol. No inbread farmers here
It’s money for me that’s the bottleneck. I work a dead-end job with little future advancement. In fact I absolutely hate the job. Fortunately I have zero debt. Paid off pickup, renting. No credit cards.
But living in Dallas is spendy. I really could save more (and should).
Tick-Tock.
Money and Time. I’m currently at two jobs, not because I’m starving but because the upkeep on the property requires cash to maintain the stuff to maintain the property. It’s almost like farming, without the sale of crops to offset. I’ve been blessed that I’m in the body armor/buying silver phase of purchases (these should be low on your needs list, far, far below food and reliable/lasting water filtration) but the ticket costs at this level are on the order of “how many weeks pay will THAT transmission be?” Which get me to the second problem, time.
I have a elderly parent I care for and a 20 something son who works and helps with bills. I can’t impart on him the required thirst for knowledge (or skills) myself and my parents had because he grew up in an age where the information is right on the phone. I can’t demonstrate the need to know when that information… stops. (Because it is unfathomable. He looks at his phone like how we walk into rooms and absentmindedly hit the light switch during a power outage, ‘this can’t happen’)
As such if crap needs to get cleared, mowed, sawed or repaired for the spring… I have to schedule it between the two 48hr/wk jobs, and working two jobs is for the younger folk. Not former .mil 45 yr olds with bad knees, I should be a sponsor for Ben-Gay and Naproxen.
I have confidence in reaching the goal. I’m not gonna get my three room bunker but I might swing a root cellar that can double as a ‘nader shelter. I’m just gonna need ample warning time to use my cane to hobble down the steps or might need some padding under my knees in the fighting hole while blasting the Mutant Zombie Bikers.
One thing for you older preppers out there to think about, before my father passed away he had become head organizer and font of knowledge, he couldn’t get around much but he knew how to do things or knew where to look in the library to find it. Just cause you can’t get in the deer stand doesn’t mean you can’t know how to (properly) butcher game or stitch a wound or run a “alternative fuel reactor” or any other activity. Get some younger LMIs to help you out in exchange for knowledge or use of tools they can’t afford (yet). Besides *wink* how ya supposed to meet those co-eds who need to your Silver Eagle’s after the apocalypse?
.Space, the final frontier. I’m now at the point where either I or my junk is going to have to live outdoors if I get more.