Self-Sufficiency

Just how much can you divulge? How much should you divulge? You want to be more prepared, you have become more prepared, you have a good amount of food and supplies put up for emergencies, you may hear one of your co-workers or neighbors talking about prepping, you might be tempted to let them know just how ready you are… I say that isn’t a good idea. What you have just done is give other people a roadmap to your precious preps, right now they might even laugh at what you are doing, but I promise you, if things get bad, they will remember and they will show up on your doorstep looking for a handout, or to take what is yours.

Hopefully you are able to put up enough to take care of yourself, your family and those in your circle of friends for the duration, but chances are, you probably don’t have enough to share out. Even if you can take care of a small circle of friends and co-workers, how many have they told about your stash? It’s amazing how good a memory can work when you are hungry.

Next question is how far are you willing to go to protect what is yours? Are you willing to injure someone? Are you willing to take another life? This may sound extreme, and hopefully this never happens. But to keep things secure, for you, for your family, for your circle, the fewer people who know what you have and where you keep it, the better off you will be.

Yes, this is harsh, it is reality, and nothing is more real than an empty cupboard, whether it is yours or someone else. What are you doing (or not doing) to ensure your OPSEC? (look it up if you aren’t familiar)

1. Don’t tell what you have or where it is.
2. Don’t allow your family members to do #1.
3. Don’t show pictures online of your preps, I see this on a regular basis, whether it’s food, or ways to protect what is yours, keep it off the internet.
4. If all else fails, refer to #1.

You want to blend in with the other people, the ones who haven’t a clue, you can gently educate them, but not at your (or your family’s) expense or risk.

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What’s your backup plan? Do you have one? I hope so, everyone needs one no matter where or how they live. Today I’ll discuss communication. A few weeks ago, we had a huge thunderstorm that knocked out the electricity where I live, that’s not such a problem for us because we are off-grid and make our own power, BUT it also knocked out our internet, that is our only source of communication as well as entertainment and other things.

Eventually the power came back on for the neighborhood, but the internet didn’t come back on for nearly 2 days. That is our local wireless internet that comes from 2 towns away, it’s some 40 miles away. I do have a cell phone, but it doesn’t work here, no signal, I can use it when I get out on the road, but for here, it’s useless. My backup for communication and internet is my neighbor, he has satellite internet and a landline phone.

I was able to take my tablet down to his place and at least check my email and do some other things online, I really dislike satellite internet, it’s slow, expensive and they meter your bandwidth (ie they give you X amount of data download per month, if you go over then they knock you back to dial up speed for the remainder of the month unless you pay extra to have your data bandwidth reset), but with that being said, I will say it’s pretty reliable, as long as you have power then you will have internet.

I have been trying to talk my neighbor into changing over to our wireless internet, but I’m just as happy he hasn’t because of times like this.

This is our setup, what would you do if your power went out or your internet went down? Are you prepared with a backup? Perhaps you could use a neighbor if they used a different internet provider, or chances are you could even go to a local store or restaurant, most of them have free wifi, I wouldn’t want to rely on that exclusively, but it’s good in a pinch.

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