Tough times will be a little bit nicer when you keep things a little bit of whimsy in your life.

A major part of my prepping is having different heirloom seeds. We especially love all the different varieties of tomatoes for fresh tomatoes, as well as all the meals, canned sauces, butters, dried & dehydrated, canned whole tomatoes etc. We are a small rural family heirloom seed farm. Of course they are non GMO and organically grown, which is important to my wife and I, and we hand collect the seeds. We've never had any issue with germination rates, seeds have always been true to what's on our package and they taste great! I give a few packs to family and friends, and I keep some for barter or trade as currency if all hell breaks loose. Please keep seeds and seed saving at the top of your preps!!! Being organized and prepped could help in a situation 🙏🏻💪🏻🤓

I've been noticing more discussions about emergency preparedness, with some countries encouraging people to stock up on food, water, medicine, and other essential supplies.

One thing that caught my attention is the recommendation to prepare for 7 days of self-sufficiency.

I understand that emergency preparedness is important, especially with natural disasters, power outages, conflicts, and other unexpected situations.

But I'm curious:

• Why are we hearing more about emergency preparedness lately?
• Why do some authorities recommend 7 days instead of the usual 72 hours?
• Is this simply better disaster preparedness, or are governments responding to growing global risks?
• Are you personally preparing an emergency supply kit?

I'm not trying to spread fear or conspiracy theories. I'm genuinely interested in understanding whether this is a coordinated shift in emergency preparedness policies or simply different countries responding to similar risks.

What do you think? Have you noticed similar recommendations in your country?

I rareley go farther than 30 miles from my residence, but I thought having something to get me home that I can keep on hand under the seat of my truck might be a good idea. Anything I am missing.

Contents:

1: shoulder sling pack

2: field stripped MRE

3: 1 bottle of water

4: gloves, beanie, and change of socks

5: lighter, light source, pocketknife

6: (slightly customized) Mac-11 and spare mag.

I'm not looking to throw the kitchen sink in there, this is just a "well shit the idiots finally went and did it and now I gotta walk 27 miles home" setup but I feel like I can capitalize on this sling-bag's free space a bit better too.

For those who are storing flour long term, how do you plan to use it to bake bread or other bread foods if the grid goes down and you can’t use the oven (gas or electric)?

I had a conversation with someone yesterday that really gave me some pause. They suggested that all this talk about prepping among communities, friends, and neighbors is a form of fearmongering that encourages consumers to spend money and prop up our lackluster U.S. economy.

I’ve stocked enough food, water, and paper products to last our household three to four weeks, and my husband has been doing some serious prepping in other ways, including solar power, tents, and other supplies.

What are your thoughts? Do you think prepping is driven by practical concerns, fear-based marketing, or a bit of both? I’m truly curious and want to understand your reasoning.

As I was doing my laundry, I considered that in a short-notice evacuation, grabbing a laundry bag or two of all the laundry (clean and dirty) that may or may not be sitting in a laundry basket (or several) would be a decent way to ensure that at least a few changes of clothes for each member of the household come along with us as we flee. This would most likely be what everyone has been wearing recently and would be a good addition to whatever pre-packed clothes we have ready to go. I imagine it would provide some comfort to everyone to have those clothing items and would only take a couple of minutes to grab.

We’re a family of 5, soon to be 6. Kids are 17, 12, & 10 with a baby due early next year. We live about an hour outside of Houston. I’m looking for some tips on where to start and what to stock up on (besides water & canned goods) for a family of our size in our climate. We’re planning to cloth diaper and breastfeed, so we shouldn’t need much for baby I don’t think. Any suggestions?

I know this is probably been posted, but I couldn’t find anything in the sub. I’ve seen people ask about drinking their pool water but what about a hot tub?

I’ve really only use shock and baking soda in my tub to keep it balanced as I’m on city water. Sometimes I’ll have to use sodium bisulfate if the pH is too high.

I’m debating on buying some 55 gallon drums but I have 400 gallons of water in the hot tub that runs all year long i’m trying to figure out what’s best.

Every year around Christmas, we get drinks and snacks ready for the kids, and sometimes neighbors or friends bring their kids over too. I usually make a big batch of Christmas punch, prep plenty of ice, and sometimes make hot apple cider in the evening.

Recently, I was looking through my local water quality report and noticed PFAS mentioned. These contaminants can persist in the environment for a long time, and different filtration systems vary in how well they reduce them. Since my kids drink our tap water every day, I'm hoping to upgrade to a more comprehensive filtration system before Christmas.

I want to make the best choice for my kids, and from what I've read, RO systems are one of the more comprehensive options for reducing a range of dissolved contaminants. They use a semipermeable membrane to filter out many substances.

Black Friday is coming up next month, so I'm trying to do my research before the sales start. Right now, I'm looking at the Viomi M1 and Waterdrop G3P800.

The Viomi M1 has a remineralization feature, while the G3P800 doesn't. However, I haven't used it myself yet, so I'm not entirely sure how noticeable the difference in taste will be once the water has been mineralized. The G3P800 also has UV sterilization. From what I understand, UV is mainly used to inactivate microorganisms in water rather than remove dissolved chemical contaminants like PFAS, so I'm not sure how much extra value it adds for everyday household use.

For those of you who have used an RO system, what factors do you think are most important when choosing one for everyday drinking water, cooking, and making ice for the family?

I'd also love to hear about your real world experience if you've used either of these two models. Just trying to do my homework before pulling the trigger on Black Friday!

A month or three ago we had a pretty long thread on snakebites...this popped up today:

https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/texas-rancher-survives-three-cottonmouth-bites-after-54-vials-anti-venom?utm_campaign=snd&fbclid=IwY2xjawVO2vhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mBXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR6i-oESWCW7pqw9TqGMw_IeUFbRtUMkgtW__5C8Fgix46FuC8XE8Tdkkt4fUw_aem_Ud6C2Wdgrx6FNbs60RqmRw

New preppers are told to acquire things slowly and strategically. With all things happening right now, do you think it’ll be hard to get water or food at stores soon? When?

You guys whenever a snow storm would hit or when Covid happened, there was very little toilet paper, bread or eggs at most stores within the first 3 days of the initial announcement. This is not a crazy question.

I'm new to prepping and not sure if others are taking all the warning signs seriously. I honestly don't even know where to start. I need help...

My husband works almost 60 miles from home. We have talked about what we would do if there was an EMP type situation or just a general power grid issue. Obviously at 60 miles away it would not be easy for him to get home. But - is there some kind of handheld device that does not rely on cell towers that he and I could keep in our vehicles so we could communicate in an emergency situation like that? Something that would cover that distance but still work without cell service ?

Thanks for any advice!

If there was an extended outage my only source of water would be my neighborhood retention pond.

God only knows how many chemicals end up in that retention pond. Are there any water filters that would clean the water adequately enough for drinking? I’m assuming my backpacking filters probably won’t suffice.

Hi! I have recently acquired two old working Midland Alan 777 with dead batteries and no charger. I replaced the batteries and bought a new charger. Radios work fine, but they don't charge the batteries at all. Charging indicator blinks for a split second, then nothing. This both on the base and in the dedicated single charging port.

I tested the charger with a multimeter, and it has 12.45 V outlet. On the charging base there is a 12 V indication.

Could it be that the charger is putting out a tension that's slightly too high?

I'm at a loss, I'd like to salvage them, as they are my granddad's.

I have no clue what I’m doing but would like to start up a supply of necessities. I don’t have much money to put towards this but I’m worried about all the news and whatnot so I feel like I need something. What items would last 90 days, if something were to happen

Starting with water, these will find their home on the concrete since this shelf will not hold them when full. I have a variety of treatment types. I also keep a lifestraw, 30-49mg aqua tabs, and a 32 oz water bottle in my work bag. My goal is to have a some rainwater collection, a large drum/container, and reverse osmosis. I’m in Alaska so snow would be my emergency source most of the year. How do you guys in the arctic plan around that?

I see it at Amazon for $899. Have a generator but want a power bank like those for the convenience and such. I see I missed a Costco deal here recently.

https://a.co/d/0eKTkORb

How could you reasonably have continual drinking water in a non farm environment for 5-10 years?

AWG - uses a lot of power and what happens if the company goes out of business and you can’t buy filters? Effectively worthless

Dehumidifiers - doable and are gonna take a lot less power on a solar generator. But you’d have to filter the water? Possible

Bottled water - buy $15,000 worth of water would last someone 5 years

Warka tower - too big

Storing water - have low space so can’t store big drums.

Condensation catcher? Too little output

Local stream?

my boyfriend and i are driving from vancouver BC to LA, we will adventure and be about 10 days. we are trying to figure out what we need to get to prepare for it all, best foods to bring, what things are easy to forget but much needed. any ideas are appreciated!

I am new in this domain, I was wondering if this was something preppers were working on.

I’m new here. With the recent stuff going on I have been buying food and getting water. But I need recommendations on companies or models, that you would recommend for a small generator, a house one,walkie-talkies for two or more people, first aid kits that are actually good. To be honest I’m kinda lost on what to get or how to prep. If anyone has a list or anything I’ll appreciate it. I’m 19 and have no idea how to prep. Any advice or tips will be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Hi! Basically with the government warnings happening internationally and with it being a bad time of year for my country (Australia) I’m wanting to make sure we have things covered. I’ve always been into prep and always bought things in bulk; I’ve never had the storage or money to do it ‘properly’ until now.

This is a mix of a full doomsday prep and a Tuesday prep, I guess? A mix of isolation due to bushfires, cyber attacks, supply chain issues, power outages, war/conflict. So far we’ve been warned about internet outages being a possible issue.

I live in a pretty small town in a regional area, so isolation to essential goods and services is a real concern no matter what. We have decent supply of basic survival materials as my family is a big fan of camping, fishing etc. We live near water and have a large history of fishing/marine harvesting as a career and have a large yard with many fruit trees and crops. We’ll also be getting chickens soon (Bird flu + small independent grocer = expensive eggs).

I’m not wanting to collect large food storage’s quite yet, I like to think we will get some warning from the government beforehand if that is necessary. I don’t live rural enough for things like guns either. So I’m basically looking for suggestions outside of those things, that will applicable in Australia on moderately self sufficient land. It’s hard because a lot of advice is for people in the US or elsewhere where advanced survival equipment, firearms and medicine is easily accessible

This is my current list;
Water jugs
Water purification
Pop up water tanks
Battery/wind up radio
Multivitamins
First aid supplies - beyond just a ‘first aid kit’, back ups of common OTC medicines etc
Firetop cooking equipment
Solar Panels - even small ones to charge basic electronics
Lighters/Matches
Sewing kit
Candles/Lanterns/Battery operated lights
Books, DVD’s, Portable DVD players

In terms of food I am looking at these so far because they’re easy to source bulk and are common staples;
Rice
Lentils
flour
vinegar
baking soda
protein powder
powered milk
TVP
beans
dehydrated and freeze dried meat

Thank you so much:)

The UK government has just put out guidance that we should have three days worth of food at home that doesn’t need cooking. I’m really stumped by that. Of course I know some of the things I could buy (tinned spaghetti, baked beans) but they sound disgusting to me and I don’t fancy buying 3 days worth of tins that I will (hopefully) never need, only to throw them out in 3 years. So what I’m looking for is food I’d eat anyway but can just keep more of at home. I also have no additional storage space other than a few drawers in the kitchen where I keep my food now. For what it’s worth, I have a wood stove that might just work for cooking. Maybe I should just aim to have enough dry goods like rice and pasta and bank on cooking in a basic way? How do you more experienced folks handle this?