The First Rule of Prepping

My first rule of prepping comes straight out of the movie Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. Likewise, you should not be talking about your prepping either. You should keep those who know you’re a prepper as small and as tight a trusted circle as you possibly can. And for the love of a well-aged bourbon and good cigar do not go bragging about your prepping on social media.

This flies directly in the face of the common advice to be part of a prepping community. It is true that no man is an island and some men are peninsulas. Prepping communities have their place, but even within such communities you want to fly as far under the radar as you can.

When I was in boot camp my drill instructor gave us one of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given. He told us that we should strive to be anonymous as we move through life. The only reason people know who you are is because you either have done something extremely well or because you are a screwup. Let’s face it, there are a lot more screwups in this world than people doing well. Being known to people paints a target on your back. People are naturally envious of those who are doing better than themselves and no one likes a screwup.

The prepping life is much the same way. Being known as one who is a prepper paints a target on your back in the same way as being that friend or family member who owns a pick-up truck does. You are the first one thought of when someone has something heavy that needs to be moved.

In the event that the disaster you are preparing for actually happens, there will be no shortage of those who are suffering from their lack of preparation. People who know you have a year’s supply of food squirreled away will naturally come to you for help. If you are suffering from an extended power outage there will be those who will desperately need to use your back-up power sources. If civil unrest grows, those who have feared firearms their entire life may now come begging for you to provide them with some means for them to defend their families.

Being a good person, you will want to help out all those who come calling. Short term there is no harm in doing this, but, as the suffering continues or civil unrest grows so does the demand for what you have. You may find your resources being drained much quicker than you anticipated and your prized year’s supply of food now lasting only a few months or even weeks. If relief does not come you may find yourself and your family in the same predicament as those who had not prepared at all.

No one wants to turn people in need away but eventually it will come down to you and your family’s life or theirs. At some point, you will have to say no and that is when people will turn on you. You may find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun you gave a friend who is now desperate to save himself or someone he loves.

If you brag about your preparations to the world through social media you let the world know where there is a cache of supplies they can come and get when things get bad. The Donners ate each other when they had no other choice for survival. People will gladly kill you to take what you have before they reach that point. You may be prepared to defend what you have but you can only hold a riotous crowd at bay for a short amount of time, even when you have sufficient ammunition. You only need to look to Venezuela to see this happening in our time. Desperate, starving people are a force that cannot be stopped.

Posting your preps on social media also brings with it another very real danger but to talk about that we need to don our tin foil hats for we are about to enter Wes’ Conspiracy Corner.

Starving people are not the only ones you have to worry about coming for your resources. In the event of an extreme disaster or national emergency the country will be placed under martial law. The National Guard will be called in to assist the military and law enforcement to maintain control over the civil unrest that will happen. Napoleon is credited with saying that an Army marches on their stomachs and it is true that a well-fed army is much more effective than a starving one. There may come a time when even the government’s supplies run low and they will need to turn to alternative sources to keep the power force powerful.

Every jot and tittle of every message that is passed through electronic means is captured and reviewed by the dark forces that run this world. All pertinent information is entered on any number of lists. They know how you vote, how you side on the 2^nd Amendment and abortion, if you own firearms, and yes, if you are a prepper. Zola’s Algorithm may have been a fictional thing in the Marvel universe but it is reflective of a much more sinister reality. They record everything they can about you. They know who will be sympathetic to their cause and who will stand in resistance. They know who has the guns and who has resources that can be used in time of need. Simply mentioning the way you prep in a public form gets your name on one of those lists and sets you up for a no-knock visit from jack-booted thugs in the dead of night if things ever got that bad.

There are many who believe I am just a delusional paranoid for believing this to be true. You have to decide for yourself what may or may not be true. That is why this idea is presented in Wes’ Conspiracy Corner. You may now remove your tin foil hat.

Whether you believe that the worst may happen or not, you are prepping for a reason. It is only prudent to keep what you are doing as a well-guarded secret from as many people as you possibly can. To offer a starving person a bag of rice during an extreme famine is an act of charity, bordering on a duty. To have all of your hard work taken from you is preventable. A prudent person would never drive their luxury car to a bad neighborhood and publicly demonstrate their alarm system and expect the car to be intact upon their return. In the same vein, a prudent preppers shouldn’t disclose their hard work to the world without expecting the world to show up at their doorstep when the reason to prep arrives.