Prep Series Week 10: Talk About Preparedness

Welcome to the final week of our Ten Weeks to Preparedness series! 

Thank you for being along the ride with us. We’d love to hear about what you’ve taken away from this series. What has helped you? What do you have questions about? We’ll continue to have discussions about this series. Our next series will be focused on community preparedness. Stay tuned for that as it will likely launch in the Fall. In the meantime, thanks for being on this journey with us!

And also, if you missed anything or want to review past content, you can always find this series at the Resources & Toolkits page of Cramming for the Apocalypse.

Depending on the people around you, preparedness can be a tricky subject. In my (Elizabeth’s) experience, the most common reactions I get when I mention emergency preparedness are 1) the person doesn’t want to talk about it because it makes them too stressed out to think about it, or 2) a bit of skepticism rooted in preconceptions of “preppers.” 

The latter example happened recently in a funny way when a neighbor-friend Zoe invited a new neighbor who I haven’t met yet to our emergency preparedness meeting. The new neighbor reacted in a somewhat horrified way with “are they right-wing doomsday preppers?” To be fair, I wonder how Zoe described the meeting because in a previous conversation she asked, “when are we going to have our doomsday prepper meeting?” The whole thing is funny because we’ve kind of reclaimed “prepper” terminology for our own little liberal community. But it highlights the preconceptions of “prepping”–something I’ve written about before.

That’s why Brekke is very clear about not using the terms “prepping” when she talks about preparedness. Rather she mostly focuses on “emergency preparedness.” Emergency preparedness is something that most people, regardless of their political leaning, can get on board with. And in fact, she sees that a lot of those with progressive leanings are already practicing preparedness in their own way, she’s just marrying the concepts of sustainability with preparing for emergencies. But it takes talking about preparedness for people to see what they’re doing through a preparedness lens. 

It’s also essential to talk about preparedness with those around you to normalize it. That first reaction I’ve experienced from people–they don’t want to talk about it because it overwhelms them–is a natural response to something that’s hard to hear. They’re experiencing cognitive dissonance with an idea that they know they need to confront, but is hard to. And one of the first reactions to dissonance is to turn away from it, ignore it. But that doesn’t help anyone if disaster strikes. There’s a way to normalize conversations about preparedness and that is good for everyone in an emergency.

So that’s why we’re concluding this ten-week series with tips on how to talk about preparedness. 

Brekke has a great video about talking about and normalizing discussions about preparedness that you can watch here. We’ll cover a lot of what the video covers here in written form.

Why to Talk About Preparedness

“Prepping” is often thought of as a solitary venture. You just need to stock up on enough food and water for your family and get yourself set up to hunker down in case of an emergency. If someone else doesn’t want to do it, then that’s their problem. Our opinion is no, that’s not how it works. Most of you are probably already on board with that, but as we discussed in last week’s toolkit, one of the most important elements for an individual’s survival is knowing their neighbors. And besides, don’t we want our friends and neighbors and family members to survive in a disaster? 

While not everyone is going to be on board with the idea of preparedness right away, there are subtle ways to normalize the conversation to ease people into it. You’ll find some people will be completely on board right away. But others need to be eased in. Hopefully this will help with those subtle conversations.

Framing Preparedness as Living with Uncertainty

As Brekke describes in the Sustainable Prepping video, it wasn’t that long ago that “preparedness” was just ingrained in many people’s lifestyles, particularly rural folks. People canned and stocked up in case of snow and would expect power outages in storms. That was merely living with uncertainty. That’s something many of us in America don’t live with these days, at least when it comes to having our daily amenities function as expected. 

But with the rise in strange weather events, we can’t really say that we live in a time of certainty any longer. Maybe more certainty than the days of our parents and grandparents’ early years, but that reliability is decreasing. 

This is a great starting point for conversation. When the topic of climate change does come up with folks, this can be a starting point to talk about preparedness and what that looks like. But instead of telling someone else what they should do, plant the seed by mentioning what you’re doing to prepare in case of uncertainty.

Stay away from fear-mongering

The question is how do we have a conversation about preparedness without making it fear-based (i.e., about nuclear annihilation or extinction of the human race)? Brekke’s dream is to have a million families in the U.S. to be prepared for one month, millennials in particular. In order to get people to that point, you can’t come at it from a place of fear. That goes back to the responses I’ve had with friends who just can’t face the overwhelm and scariness of what could happen in a disaster. 

I admit that it takes practice to stay away from fear-based conversations when you’re scared yourself. I prepare in some ways because of fear, but I’ve wrapped my head around it enough that I don’t get as emotional about it. That’s not where most people are at, so it’s important to be aware of their responses and dial it back if you might be coming on too strong. 

So, how to do that…

Frame it in terms they can grasp

A great way to start the conversation about preparedness is to root it in something a person can grasp. Another approach is to frame it as an investment. Just like you invest in a 401K to prepare for retirement, and life insurance to prepare for the calamity of a premature death, preparedness is material investment. The water, food, first aid, and fuel are all investments for an uncertain future. Just like an emergency fund offers financial insulation, a stocked pantry and ack generator offer material insulation. 

Additionally climate change and the pandemic are useful ways to show the necessity of preparedness and they’re very real for most people in America, particularly those in the millennial generation and under. We are seeing more severe weather patterns and we all went through the 3+ years of upheaval in the Covid-19 pandemic.

You can help people link climate science and science with preparedness if done well and subtly (i.e., without instilling fear). In fact, that’s exactly what I’m attempting to do with this Cramming for the Apocalypse project. So asking people how they’re preparing for those more intense storms, to prepare for the fragile supply lines, is a great way to start. We already experienced a lot of the fragility of supply lines during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a helpful reminder to folks of that if you bring it up in terms of preparedness. For many, they’ve already moved on from that period, but you can remind them that something like that can happen again.

Give the gift of preparedness

Brekke has this dream of creating beautiful, well-designed gift boxes of prepper stuff such as beautiful, a solar power lamp, a super cool multi-purpose tool, a decent and compact first aid kit with cute bandages along with all that you need for basic first aid, and a nice emergency blanket. You could give them a nice water filter. Or a box of freeze-dried food. What a great housewarming gift that is for someone! (Seriously Brekke, you should start a business!)

These are ways to turn our gift-giving into the gift of preparedness. It’s a non-threatening, low-key way to prepare.

Baking it into everyday life

Some of this is out of an individual’s control, but these might give you ideas on how to advocate for bringing preparedness into the world. Examples include having emergency preparedness as a part of home economics classes or even having preparedness trainings offered at schools. It could include advocating for discussions about preparedness with your kids scouting troupes.

But what about talking about real deal prepping?

What we mean by this is things like go-bags, having an evacuation kit, having three months of food stocked up. Or “legit prepping” as Brekke calls it. She mentions that the idea of having a bunker, a year of food stocked up, and gas masks on hand didn’t really come about until the 1960s and 1970s when the idea of nuclear war became a true fear (and rightly so during the Cold War era) for everyday Americans.

This is a lot of where the characterization of “preppers” came about. That person who is truly prepared for what is considered the end of the world. “They seem to coincide with the Back to the Land movement, which is the first major homestead movement in the United States after, you know, true homesteaders,” she says. These back-to-the-land folks were more left-leaning, hippie-like. So they coincided with one another, each taking on different connotations.

Today, we can think about our preparedness as building a third way from these two movements. Real Deal prepping will have one foot firmly in the camp that fears and prepares for the end of our (arguably) well-oiled machine of civilization–whether from war, storms, or other catastrophe. This camp will inform how we think about disasters, and how we prepare in advance for those disasters. Water, food, first aid, shelter, etc– these concerns that are the dominant narrative will be part of the third way forward. 

But, we will also have a foot firmly in the back-to-the-land, sustainable living communities that arose around the same time. Living more sustainably now may help stave off some of the worst impacts of climate change. Living more simply now means less of a life-style change if and when disaster strikes. Building more localized communities now will mean more resilience later when large global infrastructure fails.

At the end of the day, we don’t want our friends and family to join us on our preparedness journey solely out of fear. A healthy dose of caution is good, but fear is paralyzing. Instead, we want to emphasize that the more prepared you are in all areas of life, the more empowered you are. If you have your own food, water and fuel, you are less likely to be manipulated in a disaster situation. You’ll be more calm and will be able to make decisions from that calm. You’ll be equipped to lead your community, and in these stressful ties, calm and thoughtful leaders will be necessary.

Let your friends and family know that you want them to be empowered. You want them to maintain as much of their personal power and decision-making as possible. Emergency Preparedness is one avenue to safeguard that personal power. And by completing this series, you’ve gained knowledge and hopefully some helpful tips on how to take agency over your and your community’s safety in a disaster.

Action Steps

This week’s action steps are more a reflection on how to approach these conversations. They’re a bit more abstract, but always worth taking notes on. You can find guidance on that on page 39 of the workbook.

And here, you can download the workbook in its entirety!

Thank you so much again for being along for this ride. We encourage you to share this series with your friends and family. As paid subscribers, they can access all of the series at any point from the website. That’s a great way to help the people you care about along on their preparedness journey.

In the meantime, happy prepping!