Visit Your Friendly Neighborhood Prepper Group

In Phil’s previous blog, he focused on building a community. We followed our own advice and paid a visit to a local prepper group, one that we found through one of the web links in Phil’s blog. We’ve been trying to make it to one their meetings for about nine months, but something always conflicted. The group isn’t very near our location, so in a disaster they’re not going to be the people in our community. Still, gathering with like-minded folks proved helpful and encouraging in several ways.

It reinforced our own prepping condition (or lack thereof). Among the folks that we hang with, we are the most prepared people we know. Yes, we know that our preps are inadequate and we have a wish-list of items and skills that is longer than your arm. Still, we’re ahead of just about everyone we come in contact with. Not so in this group. We were probably the least prepped people in the room. Being with these people gave us an in-person reminder that we have more to do.

It reinforced the reason we prep. We’re guessing you’re like us in that most of your friends don’t see a need to be prepping. When no one around you sees danger, it’s easy to begin to convince yourself that danger isn’t really present. Being with the people in this group reinforced that the danger is real and that there is value in prepping. We knew that before we went, but we left with a renewed sense of it.

It broadened our thinking. We do a lot of reading about prepping. Phil, especially, spends hours reading, learning, planning, and writing. Still, there’s nothing better than face-to-face conversations with other preppers. What have you done about…? How do you…? What do you think about…? What would you do if…? Wow! We never thought of it like that before. It was an eye-opening experience being with these folks.

It reinforced what we already knew. Especially about the need for community. One of the biggest reasons for community is that you can’t do it all yourself. You can’t even know it all yourself. There’s just too much. You need help. You need someone who is more advanced in some areas than you are to help you along. We met people at this group who were communications experts, security experts, gardening experts, and more. Hopefully we have something that we can contribute to the group, too, because there are things about prepping that we’ve learned along the way. But the bottom line is that we all need each other.

We met people whom we hope will become friends. Yes, they live a bit too far to become close friends, but they’re friendly (albeit cautious) people that we already have much in common with.

Even if you have a few friends that you’re prepping with, there is value in visiting a prepper group in your area (even if that’s outside your comfort zone). The new ideas you come away with are worth it. They won’t make fun of you for being a newbie – they’ll be glad someone else has started down the prepping road. If you’re not a newbie, they’ll be glad to have you share your knowledge. And if you’re somewhere in between, you have the best of both worlds – sharing a little bit of knowledge, but still being considered a newbie that they appreciate. Phil listed a few Web sources for locating prepper groups in his blog, 1 + 1 = Survival. Check it out and try to get to the next meeting! You’ll be glad you did.