r/preppers

A neighbor of mine is upset because they lost contact with their friends in Iran when the regime shut down their internet.

Hey Preppers,

I would love to pick your brains a bit on a topic that never lets me rest.

My wife became T1D (essentially insulin-dependent) only 4 years ago, and since then I have been thinking through every possible "what if." For example: what if there is a power outage? (Insulin has to be kept refrigerated.) To cover that, I got a powerful solar panel, an Anker battery, and a dedicated fridge to keep things running as long as possible.

The main concern I have now is: what if the ongoing conflicts keep escalating and production drops? How can I stock up on insulin, and where would I store it (a bigger fridge, I suppose)? Anyway, you get the idea.

Is anybody dealing with — or has dealt with — the same situation, or a similar diagnosis in general?

Thanks!

A buddy showed me Project NOMAD. I've set it up a few times now, pretty great! Especially if you can put it on a machine with an nvidia GPU. The built-in AI will still work (slowly) if you don't have a discrete GPU. With every resource downloaded it's roughly 600GB including the OS. I got just what I needed within 400GB with OS.

I live in Borneo, solar charging is very useful here since it's hot and humid, I'm looking for cheap yet usable solar panel chargers for emergency situations from Tiktok/Temu etc. Any recommendations will be appreciated :)

I find the prepper community does not talk about this much, but dental hygiene is an extremely important prep. I am not even talking about toothbrushes and toothpaste in your bug out bag. I am talking about going to the dentist and getting a checkup every 6 months to a year.

The reason being is an a time of emergency, a cavity can be extremely painful or deadly depending on the level of shtf. If its a financial emergency a cavity or the potential infection that results can be extremely expensive to get fixed if you don't have insurance.

In a full out shtf situation, a cavity can result in an infection that can spread to your bone and cause sepsis.

TLDR: Its important to have your dental hygiene and health squared away before an shtf situation in the form of check ups.

Id like the white and the red light for prepping, camping etc, but the black light could be used for work. As stated, white and red light is the priority, but a black light ability would be perfection (but white and red are the priorities)

I recently found about 5 or 6 MREs that I purchased back in the late 80s.

Are they still edible? If not is there anything worth separating out and keeping? Or are they just expired insurance policies?

Price tag on each is $5.95 which I find interesting.

It’s been asked a million times I suppose, but HOW do you get the people you love to prep?!

In a truly SHTF scenario, they could come to us and we’d be ok-ish. I have multiple ways to start a fire to boil water and have practiced those skills. But in a situation where we couldn’t get outside to gather water safely, I only have enough for myself, husband, and our animals for about 4 weeks. The rest of my prep depends on me being able to gather water and purifying it via RO. Of course I would house my human family before my furry ones, but I’d be forever mad at them for it.

I have enough food and vitamins to support my husband and myself and pets for 2 weeks locked in the basement. But if it went beyond that, people would need to start eating dog food, and I couldn’t imagine asking my pregnant sister to eat dog food before me but… if she’s the one not preparing… I dunno. How do you even make that call without being in that spot?!

I don’t know. All of these “what ifs” make me feel like I’d rather be worse off than being prepared. That’s not true, and I know survival would kick in. But HOWWW do you get there!?

I have enough food for at least a year for my husband and myself and our dogs. Enough water to last us through an initial crisis and working on getting more. But how do you come to terms with your family asking for help and saying “no?”

Because I think that’s what I’m facing in a full SHTF scenario, and I’m definitely not prepared to do that. :(

Hey! So I’ve gotten years of use from a cheap Amazon spotlight, whether camping, camping watching predators from a distance at night, etc., but I recently tossed my old spotlight, and then the other night I had prowlers! Nothing on the game cams.

It would have been so nice to have put them in the spotlight lol. I knew I would want to buy another one sooner or later because of how much use I got from the previous one, but it’s time. Thank you in advance

Just got off a call with a guy about eco villages and I didn't realize how many of them there are across the nation, and world for that matter.

It feels like intentional community, shared living, and self reliance are becoming a real solution due to the cost of living and the overall toxic feel of society. I am interested in how many of you would actually consider living this way?

Would you join an already established community? I have a family so that is a big NO for me. Establishing one seems like fun and a great way to break from a lot of the systems inputs.

You still gotta buy or have access to land though. Not cheap. Interested in your thoughts, have you considered this and such.

Please use this thread to discuss whatever preps you worked on this last week. Let us know what big or little projects you have been working on. Please don’t hesitate to comment. Others might get inspired to work on their preps by reading about yours.

A few years ago, a friend introduced me to the Back to Eden gardening method. It involves no tilling, using cardboard to suppress weeds, heavily mulching the first year, and then applying a layer of wood chips annually.

I diligently weeded and watered by hand, prepared compost tea as fertilizer, and employed a neem oil mixture for pest control. I believed this was the method our ancestors used to cultivate food, so I decided to adopt it in case the economy faced challenges and modern gardening supplies became unavailable.

However, my results were discouraging.

The garden starts out strong in the spring, but by mid-summer, I’m freaking out when I see hundreds of squash bug eggs beneath my squash leaves. Tomatoes fail to set fruit due to drought, and potato plants are plagued by disease. It’s disheartening.

By late summer, the weeds have grown as tall as me, and I’ve essentially given up on the garden. This happens every year.

This year, I’ve decided to abandon the natural, primitive gardening approach and embrace modern methods. While I’ll still use organic practices, I’ll incorporate modern techniques. I purchased a tiller and am tilling up rows, applying weed fabric between each row. I’ve set up drip irrigation on timers and installed insect netting on every row. I’m also using organic fertilizer from a store.

I can’t handle another year of unsuccessful gardening using the “natural” method, but I’m curious to know if others are achieving success with traditional techniques. Where did I go wrong?

Mint syrup? Fruit based drinks? Non alcoholic?

Low key a prepper (don’t let my wife hear lol)

Most of my preps are to have a stocked pantry or ability to cook / have heat and clean water if utilities went out or we got a bad storm snowed us in.

Recently I’ve been playing around with ATAK with my brothers, and since I got an Android device to run it, than can have an SD card. It got me thinking, what are some PDFs or digital files I should save for the what if or shtf type moment. Or even nice to have while back country camping.

Things that come to my mind quick are first aid, radio manuals, knot tying type stuff.

I’d love to hear what other think would be good to have downloaded digitally, and if you have links or sources even better!

Appreciate you all

I live in Borneo and regularly prepping for emergency situations, I try growing kangkong (water spinach) and it was very easy, but I'm lacking in knowledge about maintaining quails and growing duckweed for food resources, but I know they're very easy and cheap to maintain at least in Borneo. Any advices?

For those in the dfw area. What plants have you planted for medicinal purpose? Just curious . Thanks.

I have been seeing advertisements for a while about a bulk kit of heirloom seeds that you use in an emergency so you can be self sustained. However I don’t know under what circumstances this would be better for.

Recently I just made a decent size rocket stove using formula milk can and another smaller food can, I tested it and it worked fine, the flame was blazing hot even with few firewood being put in it, but I'm still wondering what are the best ways I can utilise the rocket stove? I only think the uses will be boiling water, eggs, maybe making soup, bbq. Any other ways to use the stove?