Building a Prepping Community

Keith Thomas  00:00

Welcome to typical prepping, the podcast for those who would like to start their own disaster preparedness plan, or those who have gotten started, but are not quite sure where or how to take the next steps. Each week I'll present a disaster preparedness topic with actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to start or grow your personal disaster preparations. Thanks for stopping by to listen today.

Keith Thomas  01:00

I'm Keith and welcome to typical prepping. In this episode, we'll be talking about building up your personal prepper community. This could be as complex as having your own compound with its own set of rules, or just a group of individuals to work with and your neighborhood or general area. Every good emergency plan should include a network of individuals who possess all the skills, talents, and resources to thrive during a disaster. Human beings are designed by nature to live in groups and depend on each other for survival. Survival rates significantly increase when a group of people works together. The benefits of the group might mean the difference between life and death.

Keith Thomas  01:50

 In this episode, we'll talk about why and how you can create your own network or community of individuals ready to thrive through a survival situation. 

Keith Thomas  02:00

So why should you build your own prepper community? You will directly benefit from having more people around you who are ready for disaster or crisis. If your neighbors have small children, would you turn them away if they came to you hungry and asking for food? Or if it was some random family desperate for your help, these will be extremely difficult choices. While it's beneficial to think about what you would do in that situation, there are steps that you can take to avoid these problems. This would include encouraging people around you to have their own supplies and plans. When more people around you are prepared for a crisis, they are less likely to be dependent on you or create an awkward situation where you have to turn them away, or worse, you're less likely to stick out in a crowd. It creates backups and wider availability of supplies. So if you need something, there's a greater chance someone has it, and would actually help you. It increases the number of places you can bug out to rather than just having your home and might be a bug-out location. Now there are more safe places. You can pool resources to make more expensive purchases. You can share skills. It's unrealistic that one person will be a great medic and a great electrician and a great combat leader and a great farmer and so on. You have strengthened numbers. How can you protect yourself if you're alone in sleeping? You're with people you know and trust in a crisis instead of some random strangers. People tend to band together anyway. So choose the people ahead of time. Building prepper communities makes everyone stronger and happier. the right balance for most preppers is a mix of Love thy neighbor and putting your family first. So the argument is pretty simple. If you believe that most people are woefully ignorant of and unprepared for the real dangers we face. One of the best ways you can teach a man to fish is to encourage them and help them get prepared on their own. It's a free gift you can give others most people will come to appreciate this gift because it makes an eye-opening and impactful change in their lives. Many preppers enjoy hanging out with other like-minded people. Whether it's just casually or doing something specific, like a medical training course. It's fact that when we work on meaningful hobbies with people we enjoy our happiness Energy, and even job performance goes way up. You could take this a step further and join or create a local prepper group. You can still be private and selective about it. So the whole town doesn't know. But with some care and attention, you can start reaching out to people who would make a great addition to your group, like someone with a special skill. 

Keith Thomas  05:26

So how do we reach out to prospective members? The question remains, how do we bring up the topic of prepping to people we may think may be a good fit for our group or community. Rather than jumping right into preaching, ask them what they've already done to be ready for emergencies, listen to their story. If you think they might still believe the outdated stereotypes of preppers either avoid the word prepper. Altogether, or make a point that the reality TV stigma is no more accurate than thinking the Kardashians represent everyone in Los Angeles. Keep it simple, keep it sane. Maybe there's some reasonable and specific disaster to prepare for in your area, like an earthquake in California or hurricanes along the southeastern coast. If you make the situation real and logical, people will drop their barriers. Help them think through a real scenario. What would happen if a tornado came through and your kids are home alone, while your work? Put it in context, they might believe that in order to get prepared, they need to move to the country and milk their own cows. Help them understand that it can be as simple as getting a few weeks' worth of supplies for their home, along with some practice and planning. Tell them why you enjoy prepping and what you've learned. For example, many adults today find it hard to get out of the house, hang out with friends and do fun activities. Even if that's the only reason you've enjoyed prepping, maybe they will too. Once you have your group or community selected, you can suggest and get together to introduce everyone. An informal Meet and Greet if you will. This would also be a good time to discuss a monthly dinner party or cookout to discuss the structure of the group and talk crisis scenarios. Teach what you have learned as a prepper and build relationships with your community or group. Building your own local group or community is of great advantage when dealing with a crisis situation. It lightens the burden of each individual involved, lowers stress, adds security and the group benefits from the pooled resources. And everyone reaps the rewards brought forth by the individual skills, labor, and camaraderie formed in the community. Well, folks, that's going to do it for this week. Thanks for listening. And join me next week for another preparedness topic. And until then, stay safe and be prepared. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave us a five-star rating and a review on your favorite podcast app. This really helps the show and gets our message out to others looking to start or improve their prepping skills. If you found value in this content, feel free to leave me a donation at buy me a coffee.com/typical prepping. Your donation helps with the production cost of the show so I can continue to bring you more amazing content. Also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. If you're unable to access these links in the show notes on your favorite podcast platform, you can access them on our website at typicalprepping.com. Until next time, stay safe and be prepared