02/11/2025
This is spot on. It's not about zombies; it's about all the little emergencies that just happen.
Great comment: As I have gotten older, my thought processes and my household expectations have become more in line with my depression era grandparents. We have and do things around our place to make life easier and more livable when the unexpected happens. When SHTF doesn't have to be apocalyptic. S #!* can come in all sorts of sizes, colors and forms... from there being no cat food available for weeks, to stopped production of a needed medication, to gasoline rationing, close of local business, power outages, service outages, family illnesses, family emergencies, evacuations, wildfires, broken down vehicles and large household appliances, or loss of income/job. All have happened in my life at one time or another and being a bit ahead on what I can has always helped lessen the burden and anxiety.
The older I get, the less I think of keeping extra feed on hand to ride out some zombie apocalypse or world disaster, and the more I think of keeping extra feed on hand in case something happens to me and I’m physically unable to do chores. Or something happens to my husband, sons, or another close family member or friend and I’m too busy (or not home) to take care of things at the farm. So the extra feed is just there to help someone else be more able to help me.
Thinking about “prepping” in light of zombies or tacticoolness or “the world sucks” or a bold “I don’t need no one” gives you a sort of ego boost (whether you want to admit it or not). It makes you feel like the hero in your own movie. And that’s fun and sexy and badass. I mean, I’d definitely pay to see that movie—the costumes are probably awesome and I bet the soundtrack is pretty good, too.
But the older I get, the more I think about “life happens” and less about “the s**t hitting the fan.” Which is a bummer because imagining plinking at bad guys from my roof as they come down my gravel road to try and steal all my canned goods is a lot more fun that imagining a terrible diagnosis or an unexpected change in employment or some life changing family drama that makes all the threads of life start to pull apart.
The truth is, it’s not the big, dramatic doomsday scenarios that upend our lives—it’s the quiet, personal storms we never see coming. And while gearing up for the apocalypse feels bold and exciting, real preparedness is often quieter, and far less cinematic. It looks like having enough on hand so a neighbor can step in when you can’t. It looks like setting things up so life can keep moving, even when you’re knocked sideways.
Because at the end of the day, the world doesn’t have to end for your world to change overnight. And sometimes your world doesn’t have to change overnight for things to just get a little bit harder and find you wishing “man, I wish I’d have gotten a little more ahead.”
