A Guide to Prepping for Regular, but Concerned People

This is the first part of a two-part series. In this piece, I discuss short-term survival away from home. In part two, I’ll discuss planning for the long term at home and how to build homes for a future filled with climate change and political uncertainty.

A U.S. Marine awaits the start of the Bellows Ruck Sack Race, a nine-kilometer race hosted by 3d Marine Littoral Regiment, aboard Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Aug. 12, 2023. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Hunter Jones) Public domain

In 2011, National Geographic aired the first episode of what would become four seasons of fascinating comedy gold.

Called “Doomsday Preppers,” each episode highlighted a family, usually somewhere in the Midwest US, who took preparing for the apocalypse to new heights of eccentricity.

Let’s set aside the fact that National Geographic, a world leader in geography, cartography, and exploration, would indulge in the intellectual bankruptcy of pop cable television to chase ratings.

Maybe that’s too harsh… I recently co-hosted an episode of Mysteries Decoded on The CW (which has yet to air) and I’m certainly not intellectually bankrupt — although I am on an intellectual budget.

In Mysteries Decoded, I play myself, Wes O’Donnell, a former military technology expert, and skeptic — essentially the equivalent of the “bad guy” because people who watch paranormal shows typically don’t like to hear how this or that can be explained with science or reason — but I’m digressing…